"Windy Couloir", First Ascent of Amphu 1

I and my two Korean friends made first ascent on Amphu I in Makalu-Barun National Park in Eastern Nepal.  Here I note the climbing trip.

Route map of "Windy Couloir" on the south-west face of Amphu 1

“Amphu 1” that we aimed is the name given by the Nepalese government to the peak east of Amphu Laptsa pass and west of Baruntse.  The height is Nepal-officially known 6840m as HMG-MT and Schneider map describe so, while sometimes referred 6740m as HMG-Finn map does.  As we acknowledged, previously only once a permit for intending the peak was issued to a four-member Japanese team in the late Autumn 2012.  Also, we found two teams—one German and one Spanish—tried what they call “Amphu” in 2008.  However, we believe we have climbed a different one.  The Japanese recalled that they approached their peak through Chukung glacier, which lies south of Chukung, east of Ama Dablam, and north of Ombigaichan, while from the north of Amphu I flows Imja glacier and Amphu Lapcha glacier.  Therefore, we guess they actually tried to climb P6402, northeast of Ombigaichan, or another in the area.  At November 2012 they climbed the north face but retreated due to avalanche danger.

Also, in Spring 2008, five Germans have reported to summit P 6238m (Schneider map) from its north ridge, and they called the peak “Amphu middle” since it has two neighbor near.   Again in the Autumn of the year, a Spanish climber Jordi Tozas solo-climbed what he called “Amphu South” (6146m) and “Amphu Middle” via new route.  

It is true that the name “Amphu” is frequently used to refer the peaks and pass in the area, by the maps and probably by the locals.  However, the highest one is Amphu I, between Amphu Laptsa and Baruntse, and we think it is a bit awkward to call lower peaks of other group “Amphu middle” or “South” and so on, since they are rather quite afar from Amphu I, the main peak of, if any, Amphu group.  

On 19^th Sep., we fled over to Lukla.  The trek to the objected peak was planned through two high passes of Zatra la (4610m) and Mera la (5415m).  In addition to that, we firstly included to our acclimatization trip to climb Mera (6461m).  Because we had no climbing Sherpa we did not know the route.  We mistakenly climbed through not-normal route, north-east of the normal route.  However, there were heavy snows which have induced snow avalanche that resisted us to climb only up to 6200m.  Indeed, the snow of the late monsoon in the Eastern Nepal continued up until in the early October. 

Arrived at the Amphu I Base Camp at 27^th Sep.  The elevation of which was 5250m, near the highest pokhari (lake), which we called “Nilo Pokhari” (blue lake) in the “Panch Pokhari” area.  The leader An Chi-young had visited this area a month earlier to reconnoiter, and by which it was easy all for us to set the camp at a best place. 

We three have all climbed and got to the top of Mt. Everest in different years.  An has climbed many Himalayan peaks including Himjung of first ascent the year before.  Kim Young-mi has also climbed numerous peaks in Himalaya and other region.  I myself also have similar mountaineering experience.

After twice of reconnoiter climb up to the 500m-long glacier, we started to climb 8^th Oct. as we got a good weather window after twelve days of stay in the B.C.  The route in the glacier was a bit complex but without serious danger, and we fixed ropes a few meters in order to rappelling down.  We planned to climb the south-west face of the peak through a deep couloir left in the wall, taking one of the numerous and various wrinkles, climbing over to the west ridge after exiting out through a ramp.  At the foot of the glacier, 5480m, however, we have to have spent hours to recover our gears we deposited days ago, finding some broken: my helmet and Kim’s crampon.  Hers was usable, although mine was not.  So I climbed the face without it.

The first day of climbing, a quite strong wind swept up.  At the base camp, we heard later, tents were damaged due to the gale.  Snow showers and falling icicles bothered us to climb on.  The first nine pitches which I leaded were relatively easy, although the other two have been attacked by falling huge icicles.  The wall became steeper and steeper as we progressed.  The ninth pitch was all blue ice, could be graded WI5 and 80°.

Myself leading the lower part of the face

Getting dark soon.  However, it proved almost impossible to find a bivouac place on the ice wall.  I felt quite tired and Kim took the lead.  Two more pitches were climbed in the night and at 20:30 when, suddenly and fortunately, we found an ideal place to spend the night: by all means a-small-tent size, with ice-clawed its upside, for which we call the place “Alligator’s Mouth”.  We have had a good night, and decided to left all the camping gears there and lightly go to the top and return the next day.

We started 8:30 in the morning.  Kim leaded again.  Two more pitches brought us just below a ramp to the west ridge.  However, it was now almost vertical in soft snow!  An took the lead.  The last ten meters were quite tough, and finally we got up on the ridge.  We found that, to the contrary to our expectation, the ridge was quite sharp with soft snow.  Snow-bars sometimes upheld no security.  The first three pitches on the ridge necessitated quite delicate climbing.  The angle became low; long traverses continued and the wind, too.  Finally we got up the summit at 3pm. 

An leading the summit ridge

at the top of Amphu 1

After some rituals on the summit we hurriedly got down.  At the dreadful ridge, where no protection would work, we belayed each other to climb down carefully.  We have arrived back the Alligator’s Mouth, looking at sunset.

Kim descending down

Descending down the next day was not difficult.  We had to leave our gears on the wall for the rappel protection since V-thread did not work well on the snow-ice mixed ground.  We could safely come back to the base camp and have lunch.  We call the route name “Windy Couloir” (AI5 WI4 XI ED2, 1800m (incl. glacier 500m)).

Everest: Toilet for lust

"Everest is a jumbo toilet, toilet for lust." - by Rim, a filmmaker.

at the everest base camp.

Whose Choice?

I was the person in the position in between the expedition members and the Sherpas.  However, it is quite subtle affair who would choose Sherpas for a team.  If a member chooses, responsibility for the Sherpa's demeanor to be to the members.  But still, there are "good" Sherpas as well as "no-good" Sherpas, not only for members but Sherpa themselves.

Ngaa Tenji Sherpa, who was supposed to be a team guide (sirdir) for my team has told me twice that Sanu Sherpa would not come with us.  I replied to him, firstly, "year, okay," and secondly, "would I call him; how could he come with us?"

He did not replied "yes," in words; however, his face told more.

Nature for writer

You need to continue to write on, in order to live out the world as accepting one's life as of pleasure, even though evident is you'll be faded out from the world.

- at an airplane to KTM

Time to Leave

"Sunrise is for today, sunset is for tomorrow," Mr. Kim, a fourteen eight-thousanders summitter says.

We live today because of tomorrow we wait for.  Time to leave to the mountain.  

at Mingma's house

Group vs. Mass

Group (or aggregation) necessitates multiplicity constituted by properties of each individual in the group, where the priority of "I" has no privilege.  On the other hand, mass (or crowd) designated, being an object of an observer, as opposite of "I" or "my" part, exists firstly with its category as the Other.

The former -- group -- focuses on the multiplicity itself, formed by many-ness, not by individual subjectivities themselves.  Many-ness is to pay attention on the relation between individuals or individual subjectivities, not just to recognize its plenty.

Although identical in terms of quantity, the concept of the latter -- mass -- is founded on assumed hierarchical, qualitative difference in properties of each individual.

Are they 'mass' or 'group'?

Hundreds of climbers on the sheer Lhotse face to climb Mt. Everest, May 18th, 2012.  

Everest again, "From 0 to 8848"

Climbing Mt. Everest (8848m) again.  I will try Lhotse (8516m) without supplemental oxygen.  The expedition leader Mr. Kim Chang-ho will try Mt. Everest "from o to 8848" which means he and another one member will Kayaking through Ganges river, bicycling to Tumlingtar (482m), trekking to the Everest base camp, and climbing without supplemental oxygen to the top of Mt. Everest.

Sherpa Losar Rally

Kathmandu Sherpas conduct a bike rally in a huge scale at Kathmandu, Nepal.  They celebrating Losar (or Lhosar), the Buddhist new year's day, Feb. 13, 2013.

Sherpa Life in Winter

Finally, I returned back to the Makalu Walung Sherpa village.  It was the winter 2012/13, and, before coming back to Kathmandu to prepare next spring's expedition to Mt. Everest again, I stayed there about little more than one month.

I have been writing articles on my experience at the village with the Sherpas on the Korean monthly magazine "Mountain" ('Sahn' in Korean) where I contributed as an editorial member.  Here is I think not a best place I could write about my experience in its entirety, so, I wouldn't do but, if you want, visit the site and read  yet everything is in Korean.

arriving at the Walung Sherpa village, finding canola flowers all blossomed

one eight-year-old girl pour hot water to my "tongba" (millet whisky) cup

winter is "good" season for the people.  cool and clear weather, without much work.  most "puja" and marriages occur.

Sherpanis carrying down "ssolum" (fallen leaves and etc.)

killing a pig

tough life at the lamb hut

an old Sherpa man making a bamboo basket ("chebboo")

Dhaaja puja at the "Purba"'s house

Sherpa expedition to "Kambalung", a sacred cave for Nepalese, Yaphu area.

Meaning of Climbing Grade

"It looks like climbing grade has been applied for showing off, not for standards expressing the extent of difficulty, as it supposed to be.  I just mentioned this climbing was easy.  Without any grade."

- The P'iolet d'Or (Golden ice-axe) Asia award recipient, Mr. Kim said, 11. 29. 2012.

Post-Humanism: an Impossible Project

Bertrand Russell once wrote: "nature is irrelevant to human value, and therefore may be understood only when we overcome (or ignore) our morals" (reverse translated from a Korean translation of "Do We Survive Death" (1936)).

I suggest seemingly impossible project: to overcome a humanist understanding of the world, such a Russellian nature/human dualism.  It can be thinkable that the border between the two duality itself an outcome of human thought and, after a series of thoughts, our understanding of everything has a fundamental limit called humanism.  This is the basis for some post-modernists in humanities or social scientists after 1980s who have tried to resist any humanist project including constructivism.  However, their project was impossible in nature: without such a dualism, of nature/human or more primarily of subject/object, any task of reflecting ways of human to the worlds could be unthinkable.

Talk to Oneself: Border of Individuals

The fact that frequency and extent of 'talking to oneself' differ from culture to culture implies difference of the extent of rigor in bordering individuals.  "I" talks to "me".  What is "I" and what is "me"?  The "me" exists in the form mixed with the other; the "I" of the other, a fundamental mystery, spans over my "me".

Horizontal and Vertical

The fact that among the two-eyed animal species no one has eyes vertical suggests a significant phenomenological idea.  Although the directional nature of horizontal and vertical in their world can be seen no other than as only different sorts of unit which measure geometrical quantity of same kind, we must assume there is to be a fundamental qualitative difference.

by Shobha, 1999

Nostalgia for Being

That time flows always to next, that here we have things or materialities onto which time accords in order to come up tomorrow, and thereby that provising such a distinction between things and time are all the beginning of series of fallacy: a fallacy we may call ____.

"Sex industry is necessary evil", "festival is required for supplying protein", "history develops according to sudden steps, which may be abstracted and applied to prospect future": typical outcomes of the fallacy.

This I would call 'nostalgia for Being', nostalgia for things, nostalgia one assumes being prior to time, things like human, agencies, economy were awaiting to participate in time.

Freedom from Desire

‘Consider those who in the course of many lives on earth have become free from desire. By this we mean that all their desires have found fulfillment within the soul itself. They do not die as others do. Since they understand God, they merge with God.

‘When all the desires clinging to the heart fall away, the mortal becomes immortal. When all the knots of desire strangling the heart are loosened, liberation occurs.

‘As the snake discards its skin, leaving it lifeless on an anthill, so the soul free from desire discards the body, and unites with God – who is eternal life and boundless light.’

-         Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4:4.6b

Fieldwork Hardship

I have joined another journey, right after back to Kathmandu from Mt. Everest.  The journey was to instruct students (of course adults) on a smaller mountain in Langtang area, northern part of Nepal, with other Korean instructors.  It was rather short period -- 15 days -- and easier.  But difficult to motivate myself in.  Below is an excerpt from my diary.

Is it really difficult to conduct high-altitude mountaineering and anthropological fieldwork side by side?  I find I become inattentive to jot down everything detailed onto my note.  As for climbing, continued tensions of climbing seemed have made me almost fully seasoned.  Or, do I not feel tension because I am rather inside of the continued tension?  Even at this instructing program, I care little about climbing, but more on my lovers, philosophical themes, payment and money, equipment and clothes, and relationship with students and others.

I feel a necessity of days for taking breath, calmly thinking over, and thereafter founding a basis again.

At the Yala Peak base camp
10. 31. 2012.

with other instructors. photo by Kim Jong-O.

at the high camp of Yala peak.  the peak seen behind is Langtang Lirung

at the summit of Yala peak.  photo by Kim Jong-O.

at a Kathmandu hotel.  photo by Kim Jong-O.

Other's Existence: Impossible to Comprehend

Other's existence is impossible to be, overcoming theoretical standard and accepted real, regarded equally with one's own.  One always ends up with a belief of others as an immature being who could not understand myself and thereby unable to scroll up to the plane I thought out now.

For example, 'a person under age' is nothing but a social habit of such hierarchical relation.  It is the impossibility of comprehending other's existence that makes us participating in production of status and hierarchy.

Coming back from Mountain

Helicopter at the Everest Base Camp

Riding a helicopter full day sat on the Temba's body.

Had been considering whether I should have come back to Kathmandu, but finally got on the heli at the Everest Base Camp.  The pilot perhaps British or Australian seemed not at all care about the dead body, and, rather, he looked like enjoying an acrobatic flight.  He was coming from Kathmandu this morning, and let us down to a flatform at Namche for hours, flying to Island Peak carrying tired climbers from its high camp to the B. C.  

Helicopter flying down from E.B.C. to Namche Bazar

I was just hungry, finding out that nothing I ate the morning.  Our liason officer Gyaljen Sherpa gave me a biscuit.

The Namcher policemen wanted to open and see the dead body's face, to whom I expressed my anger.  "It took a great effort, why do you want to open it!"

"This is my work, and I need to check whether he dead as reported," he said.  "And, if nobody wants to care about him," he continued, "how can he do any?"

Poor Tenji lost one pair of his gloves somewhere today.

Descending onto a yard of a hospital at Kathmandu, we have found a girl screaming and crying, must be Temba's eldest daughter among three.  How shots of cry would gain back a dead life.

Came back to a korean hotel where we members stayed before launching expedition, taking back my luggage and logging on via my laptop.  No having lost my memory of my ID and password, that I had done months ago.  Went back to Dawa's house to sleep.  So much out of mind.

10.18.2013

Fluctuation of Objectivity

I believe it might make some people uncomfortable if I write about the "conflicts", the troubles which have made themselves clear after the accident.  I would say simply that there have been a series of occasions which developed into sets of conflicts among the people involved, including not only the foreign climbers (Koreans and Polish as well) and the hired Sherpas but also people of the agencies in Kathmandu and in Seoul.  Here, I would rather mention a few thoughts on, in particular, the scheme of development of conflicts.

What would define the condition as a conflict?  A tentative answer is: fluctuation of emotions.

How the Sherpa has dead, and what the death have meant, was never identical, as well as not equally empathetic, to all of us.  Some people said, "Polish do not know mountain"; others say "Sherpas are lying"; for still others "Some Koreans are crazy", and so on.  Moreover, each of their assertions have changed into another expressions with other impressions as time goes from the beginning, or rather at the earliest stage when any had in one's mind a climbing activity, to the last stage an individual subject could remind on any occasion of its past.

People say: We want to know the truth, what really happened as they were.  For them, any development of ideas perhaps based on a different recognition of the "truth" is, by definition, wrong, and needs to be corrected, by an injection of truthful knowledge.  According to this wide-spread habit of thought, the past is there as an objective, universal.

This is where relatively few thinkers in the history of human thoughts have tried to overcome, say, the Kantian original-and-replica dualism and by which to clear out any assumptions unquestioned on the nature of human being.

As the mountains we never be able to acknowledge

Sliding rock: it is something, say, may be funny, or frighten us.  We make something fun, or be surprised by, for which we do feel unavowable quality to a certain extent.

Summit Bid for Lhotse

It was afternoon October 13th, when I barely realized that it is impossible to dig up and make it flat the slanted field of the camp three on which I planned to pitch a tent.  Wind became stronger.  Meaningless shoveling onto the icy snow continued, with trying to suppress such a thinking to come down to the lower camp dominate my mind.  

Then, Lhakpa, one of the two Sherpas hired from the Polish, asked me:

"You can join us, if you want."

The Polish leader also agreed him and asked me so.  

One of the two Polish Sherpa, Pemba, in their tent at the camp three (7200m)

We were melting the "Kim-bab", a Korean traditional food which used for my lunch.

Tenzin is a young Sherpa, whom I met firstly on the summit of Everest in the early morning of 19th May, 2012.

Wind was getting more and more severe.  The Polish tent in which we three were rested was strong enough not to be broken by the fierce wind.  We shared food and fuel and the roomy atmosphere we made together.

Melting a fruit can on a stove.  Everything we may want to eat was frozen.

We three and other six Polish members climbed up to the place for Lhotse camp four (7890m) next late in the morning when the wind stop.  Nobody used supplemental oxygen, although I had breathed with my own a couple minutes while climbing up.  I had to carry more than 20 kg in my bag: two bottles of oxygen, a sleeping bag, a small tent, three snow-bars, a cooking set with a gas stove, food for three days and so on.

It was one of the toughest hour when, as the sun setting, I found one hundred meters I needed to climb up to the camp.  Getting quite colder, the heavy rug-sag resisted me to go up.  Hopelessly I had shouted of requesting help to the climbers who shortly before me arrived and started digging the field for the camp.  Only one tent, for three or four, they could pitch on, inside of which yet seven people were, including Alexei and two Sherpas.

I joined them, but I knew I needed to go out and to set my tent on, as the Polish leader asked me so with Alexei.  Two Sherpas, Pemba and Tenzin, gratefully, helped us regarding the job.

However, the tent has never enough room for two, especially for the large body sizes of myself and Alexei.  Pemba once wanted to join us, though he went into the larger tent -- in which even six people already should have spent the night.  Moreover, the fabric of the tent is not waterproof.  Continuous snow-shower resisted us two take naps.  I began to use my supplemental oxygen with 0.5 liter per hour -- scarce amount but still better than not to use -- when we had crumpled into the tent to make us comfortable as far as possible.

All of us there could not make a good sleep, due to the snow-shower, wind, freezing cold, and the cramp space.  A few times, though, we discussed about when we would start to climb up to the summit.  Nobody climbed up that night; too tired was all of them.

Accident

The next morning I had to consider whether I climb up or down.  It was only me who planned to use supplemental oxygen from the camp; the Polish were supposed to fix hundreds of rope whenever dangerous section come up.  I did not have a clear knowledge of the route to the top, so I initially thought just follow others.  But they would not use oxygen bottle, which perhaps make them slower than me.  

But, I found that they only had brought up there 200 meters of rope, that is never enough to fix sections on the route where usually at least 800 meters needed.  It seemed that they would climb roped-between (anseilen).  I felt I was not strong enough to climb by myself the steep icy gully.  I decided and started to come down, ten in the morning.  

"Big accident!  A Polish member has dead!"

It was next early morning, however, a surprising news heard from my Ngaa Tenji, who were climbing up to camp four of Mt. Everest, via the walkie-talkie.  At the camp two, I tried to contact the Polish leader and was able to tell him the news, but he did not know what had happened and suspect the Sherpa's report, since at the camp four, he could see all the members with him.

The dead body, as Ngaa Tenji found first in the early morning, was proved as of Pemba's, not of any Polish member's.  He fell the sheer Lhotse face 1,500 meters long down to the western cwm glacier.  We, a few Koreans as well as our team Sherpas, decided to carry "him" down to a snowfield near the camp two in order a rescue helicopter might be able to bring back to Kathmandu.  

On the other hand, another Polish Sherpa, Tenzin, had a severe frostbite in his both hands, which resisted him to climb up on the mid-way up to the summit of Lhotse with the Polish leader.  Two other Polish had gone back to lower camp earlier; The Russian, although he could climb closest to the top, had also had to forgive his second journey near the top.

With Ngaa Tenji (right) and Tenzin (middle) at the base camp.  

That day we could help Tenzin to come down to the base camp.  The next day I also came down.  It looked no hope to be able to climb further at least for me.  Things went harder.  I decided to fly out to Kathmandu the next day, with two Sherpas -- the dead Pemba and the frostbitten Tenzin.

winds on the summit of Lhotse

Friendship on High Mountain

Alexei Bolotov (49), a Russian.  He tried Lhotse without supplemental oxygen this season, which ends up with unsuccessful.  

Spending one night with him at the last camp (7890m) we become friends.  Continuous snow-shower onto the one-person tent we two had barely been able to take pieces of nap.  Although I greatly appreciate the Polish leader who lent me the tent, which made by his own company and which be without a water-proof cover, this leads into a difficult situation, in which it snowed inside of the tent overnight.  What I was quite surprised was his ability by which he made naps inside of the snowing tent with his thin pants.

Alexei tried twice the summit bid, both finalized unsuccessful, while he climbed up to 200 meters near the top.  It was too cold to climb to the summit without additional oxygen as well as fixed rope.

Myself and Alexei Bolotov.

I fortunately had a time to visit him at a hotel in Kathmandu he stayed after arriving back from the mountain, and enjoyed a couple cups of beer.  Maybe we can see on another mountain in the future.

Later, I have found that he is one of the famous climbers among Russians, climbed 11 peaks among the 14 eight-thousanders and participated in the expeditions including climbings the west face of Makalu (8463m) in 1999 as well as the north face of Jannu in 2003, the climbing praised as recipient for the Piolet' d'Or 2005. 

Death, before which we find impossibility to be transcendental

"Whenever about to start climbing, the idea of death always decides the first step of every possible trails of thought," I wrote in my diary Oct. 4th.  There will be sadness of others if I die.  What, however, is sadness?  Do we really want to avoid death because of, as Lacan understands, the "deceitful expectation for the future", and, therefore, has sadness itself been founded on a futile ground?

I would say, even though Lacan's disinterested interpretation gains favor, that it is the ground on which we live on and through where sadness, fear, and many other widely understood emotions would have dictated our present, and where we probably cannot disociate ourselves from the phenomenal world.  Put simply, I believe we cannot transcend our worldly nature, although we might imagine as such.

The broken tent of the Japanese team at camp one, 6,100 meters high.

I found the main tent at the camp two being half-broken by the strong wind, 

Progression of Climbing

Climbing up to the mountain was quite different from that of in Spring.

At first, there were only four teams at the base camp, compared to more than sixty teams in the last Spring season.  The teams are: a Polish team of six, with two -- a Russian and a Romanian -- individuals, climbing Lhotse; a Japanese team of thirteen, but only three of them would climb up to Camp two and only one climb the Hornbein-Couloir (West Ridge) in solo (others are camera staffs), the SPCC team of four, and the Korean.

The Korean team planned to climb Lhotse as well, for various reasons: Everest and Lhotse share the route up to just 100 meters below (around 7750 meters above sea level) the last camp; The fee for the lower peak is much cheaper.  I was the person who supposed to climb Lhotse.

This is why the Koreans and the Polish agreed to make the route above the Camp two together.  Although of course Sherpas are their first manpower to make the route, other members who were not supposed to fix the rope were to carry quite a lot amount of luggage up to higher camps.

The second reason is cold.  In contrast to the Spring season, the temperature gets lower as expedition progresses.  This means that if you go higher, it be much colder than the other season.  It proved much more difficult for strong winds and freezing temperature.

A climber on the scary Khumbu icefall 

Climbing up a section of the Khumbu icefall

Crossing scary ladders over countless crevasses at the Khumbu icefall

 

Climbers right below the camp one

A climber on the "popcorn field" where avalaches were frequent among the Khumbu icefall

At the Camp one.

Sherpas carrying loads to the camp two, on the Western Cwm.

A climber on the Western Cwm

A climber at the foot of the immense Lhotse face

 

Digging up the hard snow to set up tents for camp three 

The Polish tents at the camp three, 7,200 meters high.  

In the tent of the camp three (myself)

Climbers going back to their base camp, where every hot things - food, water, tents, and people.  However, it was like a maze as not a few climbers lost their way here in Khumbu glacier

Collapsing Rock

A huge rock at the base camp was collapsing, in one day morning.  Most people came to see.  Laugh.  The day before that day, Sherpas had tried to collapse down intentionally because, as they said, it was dangerous to let the stone by itself slide down.

However, I did not understand clearly whether it was something to be laughable.

After months stay of their village in another part of Nepal, now I realize the importance of the comic to them.  But, still I could not say why and how the occasion became an event to a comic phenomenon.

Members and Sherpas

Only after arriving at the base camp, and after almost finishing to set up the camps, they enjoyed a time the Koreans and the Sherpas introduced each other.  It was to the organizational companies who take part of arranging the expedition, that is, who join as guides, cooks, and other staffs, which food they need to buy at Kathmandu or along the way to the base camp, and so on.

The Sherpas were four: two of them were my Spring team's staffs, one were the leader's in 2007, and another was a person recommended by another Korean mountaineer.

In a morning at the Everest base camp.  Lingtren shines behind a cameraman

the Sherpas and the Koreans having time to introduce each other, at the early stage of the expedition period

Before going into the mountain, Koreans with Sherpas have trained climbing skills at the glacier near the base camp

Sherpas at the kitchen tent