Disappointed my personal Everest journey ended so early last year — never even boarded the plane to Kathmandu.  Have always been attracted to high peaks.  my favourite season: Winter (part of the 8% crowd who prefer snow & bitter breeze).

After announcing ‘Everest’ last January, received many more ‘Why’ vs ‘Why not’ or ‘Me too’ comments.

Super hard to explain in words.  Something so deeply ingrained in one’s core, that it becomes spiritual, soulful.  The adventure, the climb, snow, whirling wind — even watching others climb…it’s quiet & beautiful.

Adrenaline junky — that’s the charge, the tag folks give you.

Not true.  It’s being small, quiet & insignificant amidst our Creator’s largest natural wonders.  Kick your foot in, stick the axe — it’s primal, instinctual.  Your mind doesn’t drift.  Everything’s crisp, strategic, reactive.

Digged watching a fellow Boulderite summit Everest this month.  Another first, a journey shared entirely over social media.  Videos & NatGeo story posted below.  FAAANNNTASTIC!

I’ll see this peak in person someday, maybe 2018.   That’s the thing about dreams — they never die.

Thanks to new satellite technology and Snapchat, professional climbers Adrian Ballinger and Cory Richards are sharing a “real time” look at their attempt to climb Mount Everest. They’re trying to reach the summit without using supplemental oxygen, something fewer than three percent of Everest climbers do.

Adrian Ballinger and Cory Richards are trying to reach the summit of Mount Everest without using supplemental oxygen, something fewer than three percent of Everest climbers do.  Take a behind-the-scenes look at their base camp.

Adrian Ballinger and Cory Richards left base camp in Tibet Thursday to begin a six-day climb to the top of Mount Everest, and they are documenting their journey on Snapchat.

A storm suddenly overtook them on the mountain’s north side, but the pair made it through poor weather.

 

In a dramatic update on the Mount Everest climbers we’ve been following this month, Cory Richards reached the summit of the world’s tallest mountain overnight.

For weeks, we’ve shown you the first-hand account of professional climbers Cory Richards and Adrian Ballinger working to reach the summit of Mount Everest. They shared their adventure on social media. Last week, Richards made it to the top without supplemental oxygen, but Ballinger was forced to turn back after facing hypothermia.

Snapchatting Everest: A Bittersweet End for Social-Media-Savvy Climbers

Posted by Andrew Bisharat  May 25, 2016

 

 

The story of two American mountaineers attempting to climb Everest without oxygen, scrupulously documented on Snapchat, has ended with a summit, a failed push—and no Snapchat from the top of the world.

 

Cory Richards, a National Geographic photographer from Boulder, Colorado, made his first summit of the world’s tallest mountain, while his climbing partner, Adrian Ballinger, a high-altitude mountain guide from Squaw Valley, California, turned back at 8,600 meters. They launched their ascent from the north, or Tibet, side of Everest.

 

During a journey that began two months ago, they shared their day-to-day experiences on Snapchat using #EverestNoFilter. Over countless 15-second video blips, Richards and Ballinger arguably captured a less polished but perhaps more truthful portrait of what climbing Everest actually looks like, from countless days sitting around in tents to the garbage, crowds, and inexperienced climbers and the incomparable, sweeping beauty of the Himalaya.

 

They took turns speaking directly into their respective selfie Snaps (their unwashed hair subsequently spurring the hashtag #HairByEverest), sometimes making jokes, sometimes posturing vainly, but also often speaking with candid vulnerability, such as during the poignant moment when Ballinger addressed his father and promised him that he would return home alive.

 

During their acclimatization efforts, it often appeared as though the far more experienced Ballinger—who has reached the summit of Everest six prior times using supplemental oxygen—was the stronger of the two. Meanwhile, Richards’ 2012 summit attempt with a National Geographic expedition required a rescue when he had a panic attack.

 

As it turned out, it would be Richards who rose to the occasion this week, reaching his inaugural Everest summit on the morning of May 24 without supplemental oxygen, a feat that only around 200 people have achieved since Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler first proved it could be done in 1978.

 

“I don’t want this to sound arrogant in any way, but I had this weird experience where I felt like I almost got stronger above 8,000 meters,” Richards said. Indeed he did. On his summit push from the high camp of 8,300 meters, it took Richards only eight hours to reach the summit at 8,848 meters, a fast time especially for a climber without oxygen.

 

“Cory nailed it yesterday,” said Ballinger. “He passed other climbers who were using oxygen. Eight hours to the summit is unheard of.”

 

Meanwhile, the 6’4″ and 140-pound Ballinger, who’s dreamed of climbing Everest without oxygen for decades, started the day chilled to the core and could never quite warm up his internal temperature. He made the difficult decision to turn around when he found himself suddenly lacking the motor skills needed to perform the simplest operation: opening a carabiner. “That’s when I knew I was too far out there,” he said.

 

This season, at least 20 people have attempted to climb Everest without oxygen and only five of them have made it, including, perhaps most significantly, two women: Carla Perez and Melissa Arnot, who respectively became the seventh and eighth women to climb Everest without oxygen. In contrast, Everest has been summited more than 7,000 times by people breathing out of oxygen canisters, which effectively lowers the perceived deleterious effects of being at altitude by upwards of 3,000 to 6,000 feet and, most importantly, helps climbers stay warm.

 

Perhaps the ultimate irony of Ballinger and Richards’ Snapchat-Everest adventure is that Richards failed to take a Snapchat from the summit. Though he captured a few blurry selfies, his phone died before he could Snap.