Dispatch Twenty-four: April 17th, 2010 |
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Annapurna Expedition 2010 |
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Day Twenty-four: Al Filo and Joao Garcia Summit Annapurna; Rest Day This morning, after my first good night’s sleep in days, I awoke to the sound of the 8am radio call from Joao Garcia, in the midst of his summit bid. He arrived to the summit of Annapurna I around 1:30pm along with Edurne Pasaban (her 13th 8000’er) and the Al Filo team from Spain and their Sherpas. In doing so, Joao became the first Portuguese to summit all of the 14 8000-meter peaks in the world. We watched with a degree of fascination as a helicopter with a French videographer arrived in Base Camp, on his way to attempt to film Joao arriving to the summit from a 7000m vantage point (the helicopter would fly as high and as close to the mountain as possible). Weather moved in in the afternoon as usual, and after a first attempt at getting the footage, the second became impossible due to cloud cover and the flight was grounded in Pokhara. Jorge and Martin arrived back in base camp in the afternoon from Camp III, after spending the night (and a near miss with a big avalanche in Camp III, which injured one of the Spanish climbers. A part of the serac above Camp III collapsed and landed on their tent). Jorge and Martin moved their Camp III tent to a lower, more secure location, slept there, then descended. After lunch, Kinga and I worked on our computers for the rest of the afternoon in the mess tent, the group had dinner, and everyone went to sleep with the news that Joao was safely back in Camp IV.
Photos: Left: Detail of the upper slopes of Annapurna; Right: French videographer arriving to Annapurna North Base Camp |
