In the last post, I covered why I chose to climb Everest and how I am training for it. In this post, I will focus on the following 3 questions:
· What are the requirements to join such an expedition?
· Who do I go with and why?
· Is it dangerous?
But first, let talk about the progress on the Everest Climb for clean water for Nepalese kids fundraiser.
Since my last post, and thanks to the generosity of so many of you, we have now reached 21% of the goal to fund all of the public schools in Kathmandu in the Splash program.
We have raised $12,877 (including Nathalie and my match for the first $5000 donations).
This money covers over 24,500 kids across 39 school sites, that are now guaranteed clean water thanks to your generous gift. I can't thank you enough for your donations.
The Splash team has invited me to visit one of the school campuses on my first day in Kathmandu. I am so excited to see the Splash clean water installations on site and in person. I look forward to reporting back to all of you who donated with pictures of how your money is being used and applied on the ground.
Now you may wonder, how does Splash choose which country, region and urban areas to cover and how do they work on the ground?
It starts with working with the local government who must of course be supportive and welcoming of such a program. Through them, Splash surveys the current state of each school infrastructure and enrollment for each grade. This allows them to identify sites that are the most in need of their work. Now, most of these programs are initially funded through large NGOs or donors. These often grant funds with specific target outcomes and goals in mind. For example, Splash is currently working to expand their clean water program to all the public schools in Kolkata (India) and Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) because these sites have been identified by the donor who is funding that work.
In each country they work in, Splash has a local team of employees who collaborate with the government, community and school staff through all aspects of the projects. It starts with surveying the state of infrastructure and enrollment pre-implementation. Then comes the multi-months of planning the physical construction and installation of the water points in the school. Location for the water tank, the filters, the washing stations which are separate from the cleaning station; and of course the fixing and improvement of the toilet stalls. The work is contracted with local companies, but the actual filters and washing/cleaning stations are actually pre-built in India per Splash's precise specifications.
Filters are built new, customized to Splash specifications that are of the same grade as US restaurants, but with less bells and whistles to lower costs. They are also made with more durable and resistant materials.
Stations have a lot of nonverbal cues to drive the right behavior, like color and visuals. But it goes beyond this. For example, knobs are hard to use when releasing water in the drinking station so that kids don't try to wash their hands with it. You need to apply constant pressure which can only work for filling up bottles or drinking.
Respectively, the washing stations have shallower sinks so that kids won't use them to fill water bottles (because that water is not filtered).
Below you can see a sample of the water that was given for drinking to kids in a sample set of a school site in Ethiopia, Nepal and India before the implementation of the Splash clean water infrastructure.
This fundraising's goal is to cover the maintenance, repair, improvement of all the sites currently covered by the Splash program. We have reached 21% which is awesome, but I still need your help and support to spread the word and help me reach the full goal. There are still over 94,000 kids across 190 sites that are not funded and thus are not guaranteed to have access to clean water this year. I hope you will consider putting a word in for me and this fundraising project, and share the fundraising page with your friends maybe (ideally) with a personal note. (Donation site)
Now, let's address the next set of questions about climbing a peak like Everest. What are the requirements and who to climb with?
If you are a professional climbers, then it's mostly about funding your expedition through sponsorship.
But if you are like me, you are not professional climber, then the only wise way to climb is to use commercial guiding. There are many companies, some based in the US or Europe, and some outfitters based locally. They all have their own guiding philosophy. I have selected Alpine Ascent International for all my recent climbing expeditions. I love their teaching philosophy whereby guides are not just here to show you the way and guarantee your safety, but are here to teach you and transfer their knowledge. I also like that they choose for all the climbers to climb as a team. That might sound obvious, but other companies provide the basic logistics and then let the climbers move up and down the mountain independently. It's a choice. I prefer the companionship experience of climbing a mountain as a group.
A serious guiding company will also require credentials before taking you on an expedition for a mountain like Everest.
In order to be accepted on the Everest team, Alpine Ascent International requires that you have already climbed one or two of, Denali (6190m, US Alaska), Aconcagua (6960m, Argentina) or Cho Oyu (8201m, Tibet). This will confirm that you are able to climb at high altitudes while taking care of yourself on a long journey (preparation, health, nutrition, gear glacier camping, crevasse rescue techniques) in similar conditions. This is important for your own sake as well of the sake of the team. You want to know that each and every climber has built enough experience to be an asset for the entire team. Someone who doesn't know how to take care of oneself in terms of health, nutrition, gear... could end up becoming a liability if they must turn around or worse, get in a difficult situation that could end up jeopardizing the climb for the entire team.
In order to climb Denali or Aconcagua, Alpine Ascent requires that you have completed a Denali prep course (that last 7 days usually) where they teach all the necessary techniques that will be needed on high glaciated peaks.
So in a way, we could say that my preparation for Everest started over 10 years ago in 2009, when Justin, Dave and I met on Mount Baker during our week long Denali prep course.
I like Alpine Ascent’s teaching philosophy, team approach to climbing and very conservative approach when it comes to handling objective and subjective risks on the mountain. There are many other climbing service options, but this one is the right one for me.
In addition this year (as for the last 2 years), the guiding team is the dream team of guides: Ben Jones, Lakpa Rita Sherpa, and Eric Murphy.
I have climbed with three of them before on other peaks and I like them both as guides and as people. I trust their experience, their judgement and decision-making process. I have not climbed with Jangbu before, but I have heard many great things about him. Together, they have summited Everest over 30 times (Lakpa Rita counting for the majority of them). And that doesn't even account for the climbing sherpas who together also combine multiple dozen summits. Some of them (Lakpa Rita's brother) have stood on top of Everest over 20 times.
This team combines the most experience between sherpas and guides on this mountain.
Experience alone doesn't remove all the risks, but it certainly removes a large portion of them (mostly those related to human error).
So is climbing Everest dangerous? Well, any mountain-climbing activity where you navigate over crevasses, below fresh snowfields, under seracs and rock boulders anchored in ice walls present some level of danger. But this is the nature of mountaineering. The trick is to make the right decisions to lower the risk level--like avoiding avalanche snowfields, travelling in the wee hours of the morning when the snow-bridges are still hard and solid, not taking rest stop in the path of a serac or a rock fall... That is again when the level of experience of the guides becomes extremely important; they can assess the level of risk, the safest route, the safest time to travel, the safest snow conditions... In the mountain, most of the accidents end up being the result of human mistakes and poor judgement calls. Most could have been avoided with different decision making. And that is why the choice of the guiding company and the guides is probably the most important one to increase chances of success and to avoid trouble.
Next time I will cover the following remaining questions
· How do you actually climb a mountain like Everest and why does it take over 2 months?
· What type of gear is needed and what is each used for?
· Sherpas? Locals? Is commercial climbing a good or a bad thing for Nepalese/Tibetans?
· Isn’t the mountain getting super dirty and isn’t commercial climbing becoming a bad thing for the earth?
· What then? What happens after Everest?
And will provide a last update about the fundraising event and answer the final two questions about Splash.org:
· How do they know whether habits and behaviors are changing regarding sanitation and health?
· What have I personally learned working with the Splash team?
As always don't hesitate to post questions and comments.
Thierry