Welcome to The Quest for Everest 2013
This website will document Saskatchewan climber Steve Whittington's journey to the summit of Mt Everest in 2013, which begins March 21. Steve has over 40 summits under his belt, including 4 of the 7 summits of the world.
To start at the beginning of Steve's quest, click here »
Camp I
On April 15th we got up at 2:45 am to get ready to climb by gearing up and eating. We were moving in the icefall by a little after 4:00 am. Sometimes it is better to climb in the dark as you can only see what your headlamp allows you to see; you just keep moving, blissfully unaware of the enormous challenge ahead of you. By first light we arrived at our first ladder. I love climbing, but climbing rickety aluminum ladders over crevasses that are up to 150 feet deep is not my idea of fun. The vertical ladders or nearly vertical ladders are pretty easy to rip up and down on. The horizontal ladders spanning the deep crevasses are crossings that I curse and become religious about. Just before Camp I there is one last horizontal crevasse to cross. This...
Expedition Living
Everest Base Camp (EBC) is on a glacier at 17,500 feet. Our campsite consists of North Face VE 25 tents for sleeping in, a dining tent, a communications tent (which is not fully functional yet so I am hiking down to Gorak Shep to jump on the internet), a gear storage tent, a cooking tent and a domed bubble tent for relaxing in (the Yoga lounge). Our tent platforms are hacked out of the glacier ice and for further fun, the glacier has rocks spewed all over it so rocks have to be moved and made into paths and steps to make getting around camp more reasonable. Crowning the camp is our Chorten with strings of prayer flags strung over the camp in five directions. On the 8th we preformed our Puja ceremony blessing the climbers and asking the mountain...
Namche!
Sorry for the late update, as it happens from time time in the Khumbu the Internet has not been the best, plus I was suffering from a G.I. bacteria that has worked it’s way through almost every team member. I was feeling so bad that every day after the trek I just retreated into my sleeping bag for the night. The pre-everest weight I had put on is already starting to shed. Namche! We arrived into the commercial capital of Sherpa lands on the 28th. It is the hub that everything flows into up and down the Khumbu valley. Every Saturday is market day. Sherpas travel from all over the valley to trade. On our way to Namche we watched loads coming in via porter or Yak for the previous two days. Namche has every modern want and need: pubs, movies, Internet,...
To Lukla and Beyond!
At 9350 ft in elevation, 1510 ft long and 66 ft wide the Lukla airstrip is the most dangerous in the world. Built in 1964 by Sir Edmund Hillary it is the gateway to the Khumbu valley. The runway slopes upwards into the hill and the opposite end stops at a “gentle” cliff that drops off to the valley over 1000 ft below. This was our destination. We started our day in the chaos that is Kathmandu, leaving the Yak and Yeti at 7:30 am only to arrive at the airport to hurry up and wait for close to seven hours. Around 2:30 pm we were informed that all flights to Lukla were cancelled due to high winds in the Khumbu. But Wally (our expedition operator) had a Plan B – Helicopter! The ride was spectacular and we enjoyed every minute of it. We also...
Arriving at the Yak and Yeti in Kathmandu
My wife and I left Saskatoon in the grip of yet another winter storm. The storm was so bad that when the cab driver was leaving our neighborhood he did not know which way to go. He could not see a road because the snow had drifted across the road and was level with the surrounding snow banks, we assured him that plowing straight through was the course to take. It was. There was a bit of a tunnel through from some previous vehicles, he hit it right and we make it out of our neighborhood! Lifting off we felt lucky to get out of Saskatoon and on our way. Travelling is never fun, and we had a long haul including an over night in Bangkok, but nonetheless we were excited to arrive in Kathmandu a balmy +26 Celsius temperature. As we stepped out of our van...
Final Prep
There is a little over a week before I go. Lucky for me I love gear, because for Everest I need a lot of it. The list is too long to duplicate, but needless to say there are duplicates of many items. Going through everything, checking it twice, takes time. But there is another process that is occurring. I am about to leave the world for several months and I need to prepare everything else for the time I am away. Climbing Everest is not just a physical challenge, it is a mental challenge as well. Not a mental challenge like an extremely technical climb is, but one in which you have to keep a focused headspace. I leave Saskatoon in the last grips of a long cold winter, to go and climb up into a colder and meaner one, and when I return several months from now I...
Gearing Down
In less than twenty days I will be heading to the Big E. As the departure date for Katmandu nears, I have been receiving many of comments about how I must be in a really high gear of my training. It is exactly the opposite; I have been and will continue to be gearing down. That said, I am still training 7 – 10 hours a week but along with the time, the intensity has been lessened. The fact is, with climbing as a passion I always train. While it would be extremely trite to say Everest is just another mountain (because it is not, it is in a class all by itself because of its height), in some ways to me this is another climb on the list of climbs that I want to do. I recently reflected about how many days I have been in the mountains climbing the past 12...