Dispatches From Everest '98
Fully archived, daily expedition updates from the trek to base camp, setting camps on the mountain, and doing science on the summit. What it's really like from climbers on Everest.
[South Side Dispatches] [North Side Dispatches]

Quiet Hardguy Wally Berg
While other veterans of Himalayan climbing are flashier, Berg keeps a low profile, and keeps getting to the top. Includes streaming video. [Click for Story]

Interview Series With Brad Washburn
Streaming video with full transcripts of an interview series with Bradford Washburn, a legend in mountain geography and the man behind the science to be done on Everest this year. [Click for Science on Everest]

Once again, come with The Mountain Zone as we return to Mount Everest for one of the great adventures of modern times.

Below the South Col [click to zoom] (photo: Lakpa Rita, Alpine Ascents)

The 1998 American Everest Expedition will do more than try to put climbers on the highest summit in the world — it will attempt to provide a means to precisely measure that summit year after year as the mountain moves with the earth's geologic plates. This expedition calls for a combination of mountaineering daring and state-of-the-art GPS equipment to capture breakthrough data from the mountain's summit for the first time. The science regimen was developed by noted mountain geographer Bradford Washburn of Boston's Museum of Science, which is putting on the 1998 American Everest Expedition.

Join us for one of the most ambitious big-mountain scientific endeavors ever attempted. In real time, with live audio and digital images transmitted by satellite telephone, we'll follow day by day, even hour by hour, the efforts of this hard-guy team of Himalayan veterans as they work up through the deadly Khumbu Icefall into the Western Cwm and onto the steep Lhotse Face.

The Balcony [click to zoom] (photo: Burleson, Alpine Ascents)

We'll go along as they climb to the desolate South Col to fix measuring devices in the very bedrock of the mountain. We'll share the adventure of summit day as the climbers pass those by now famous landmarks: the Balcony, The South Summit, the Hillary Step.

Expedition leader and three-time Everest summiter Wally Berg heads up a small group of American climbers who all have extensive experience on the world's highest peak. Climbers Eric Simonson and Greg Wilson have both been on top of Everest, and science manager Charles Corfield is making his third attempt in as many years on Everest in the name of science. Sherpa climbing team members Ang Dorje, Lakpa Rita, Dawa Tembe, Nima Tashi and Ang Pasang have an incredible 18 Everest summits between them.

As with all great challenges, the outcome of the 1998 American Everest Expedition is uncertain. Berg and his seasoned team have been there before, they've been to the top, and they know how difficult it can be. This year, the ante has been raised: the challenge is not just to get there again, but to spend dangerous hours working in the most inhospitable place on earth.

This is the stuff of real adventure, where the stakes are high. Come with The Mountain Zone as the climbers take us to places we've never been before, not like this.

— Peter Potterfield, Mountain Zone Staff

Everest, Lhotse, and Nuptse surround the Western Cwm
(photo: Alpine Ascents Collection)