It's been kind of a traumatic week for us, as Ian Hatchett and John Arnold and Yang Li Cun were heading for the summit. They were in Camp 3. John Arnold retreated with flu-like symptoms. Daniel Mazur and Durga Tamang and Jangbu Angshera Sherpa were down in Camp 1 in support of the summit team, and a storm blew in at 3 o'clock in the morning, and destroyed Camps 1, 2 and 3.
Daniel Mazur gave a recommendation, a strong recommendation, to the team in Camp 3, which was now two members, Yang Li Cun, and Ian Hatchett, to descend immediately in the morning at the 9 o'clock radio call. There were black clouds blowing over the summit at an extremely high rate of speed and all the tents were destroyed. In Camp 1, all the tents destroyed. In Camp 2, and in Camp 3, there was one tent left standing, and Yang Li Cun and Ian Hatchett were inside.
Ian immediately decided to bail out of the camp, and he tried to rouse Yang Li Cun and was unable to do so. Apparently he was banging on Yang Li Cun's legs and telling him to 'wake up, come on let's go' and Yang Li Cun just said 'No, I'm not going to leave, I want to stay here and sleep'. And at that point, Ian decided there was nothing more he could do. He'd had an extremely rough night because the tent he'd been sleeping in had exploded, and the entire cover had ripped off, and snow and wind had swirled inside the tent, and he'd barely been able to pack his gear and get inside Yang Li Cun's tent. So Ian bailed that morning and quickly descended to Camp 1.
At that point, Daniel Mazur, Durga Tamang and Jangbu Angshera Sherpa decided to go for Yang Li Cun and they decided it was a rescue. They notified Base Camp that a full rescue was on, of this member of the team, and Jon Otto and David Roberts and John Arnold moved up the mountain to prepare to back up the rescue team. The three members from Camp 1 moved up into Camp 2, and, fortunately, Yang decided at some point in the afternoon to descend, and was able to get back to Camp 2 on his own, where he collapsed.
The team moved together back down the mountain, and was able to reach Camp 1 that night. John Arnold was waiting there in support, and they decided that conditions were so bad -- the camp being destroyed, Camp 1 that is -- that they bailed down the scree slope and established a kind of bivy at the bottom of the scree slope where the group had been caching gear.
Fortunately Yang Li Cun was alright, although a little tired and shaken up. The team was able to reform in Base Camp with basically no casualties except some upset members because a rescue situation had been implemented when it didn't seem like it was really called for because the climber, Yang, had decided he wanted to sleep or... He didn't seem to be exhibiting any signs of altitude sickness, he just seemed to be tired and said that he hadn't eaten anything for two days, and hadn't been able to drink anything because of the high winds.
The storm finally abated the afternoon after the evening it had destroyed the camps. The casualties to the team's equipment are as follows: in Camp 3 there were three tents lost, one tent left standing; in Camp 2, all tents were lost, four tents, one tent disappeared entirely, another tent went missing earlier, two tents were, excuse me, one tent was completely decimated, one tent had the door blown open and was filled with snow, and a pole went through the side; in Camp 1, both tents were destroyed, one tent was completely... had the cover completely ripped off of it. The other one had just major tears.
So, you can do the math and add up how many tents were ruined in this very short but very fierce storm. It was probably a six-hour period when it was really blowing hard. When the three members went from Camp 1 to try to get to Yang up in Camp 3, for the first part of the morning it was difficult to stand up and they were being knocked down frequently.
We have digital still photos of that attempted, I guess you could say, rescue of Yang, and as well as trying to get into the higher camps, and of the damage to the tents. We also would like to send you an email describing some of the events. So once again I'd like to stress that everyone here is okay. It's been a really hard week but were back in Base Camp, and we're the last team in the Base Camp, in all the combined Base Camps of Cho Oyu, there's no one else here.
The weather has been good for the last couple of days since that windstorm blew through. It would still be possible to climb the mountain now, but our time has run out, unfortunately, and we are heading back down to the Tibetan plateau. Our yaks are here now, and we are just packing things up. We should be leaving here tomorrow and returning to Nepal via the Friendship Highway.
Bye for now. This is Dan. See you.
