An expedition team has been reportedly forced to turn back from Balcony near summit of Mount Everest as the fixed rope was found to have been cut.
Famed climber Nirmala Purja aka Nimsdai posted a video of a radio conversation between his climbing guides, base camp manager and then himself and his team leader in an Instagram post, in which his climbing guide leading clients tells him that the line has been cut off.
“Everybody know that my team was going for the summit push,” he says in a video in a distressing tone, “There is so much dirty politics going on here on the mountain. I think today I had enough. I have been trying to keep it quiet so that I could protect the industry, but now I had to speak.”
Whether the fixed rope was cut off deliberately or snapped on its own accord has not been found out yet. Yet, this raises question regarding the safety and security in climbing big mountains.
The entire expedition relies on the fixed line. The practice of fixing a line on Everest started in 2005 to ensure safety of the climbers. It made the climb easy, which gave rise to an exponential growth of fee-paying climbers on the mountain.
The ropes are so sturdy that they hardly snap of their own. “But I don’t think any mountaineers would ever cut the rope,” said Ngaa Tenji Sherpa, founder of Summit Force, who just arrived in Kathmandu wrapping up his expedition.
He said that anchors might have come off and ropes may have gone sideways. Over 600 climbers have used the ropes already this season. “But if it is true, it’s a crime,” he said.
It has been confirmed that two expedition companies have their clients above Camp III—Elite Exped and 8K Expedition.
Record holding climber Sanu Sherpa is also leading a Ukrainian climber to the summit of the world’s highest peak. “We have not heard anything about the rope yet,” said Pemba Sherpa, Managing Director of 8K Expedition.
Currently, the government officials are back on Kathmandu after closing their temporary field office at base camp. It is up to the expedition companies to look into this matter, which is not easy task at all.
Nimsdai, in the video, says he would send a rope fixing team to fix the line and take his clients to the summit and find out the truth as well. As the time is running out on this year’s summit window, he has precious little time to achieve this.
Nepal government allows climbing up to June 5 every Spring. However, most of the expeditions are wrapped up within May end.
This year, there were two waves of summits in which about 600 climbers reached the summit of the world’s highest mountain according to an estimate by the Department of Tourism.
