2008 Mugs Stump Award Winners:
Mahoney/Gilmore/Wilkinson—Kangtega, Nepal

Our team Ben Gilmore, Freddie Wilkinson, and myself (Kevin Mahoney) met in Katmandu October 5th for our expedition. We had arranged all in country logistics through Nima Sherpa of Suswagatam Trekking agency. This proved to be very helpful. We spent October 6th tying up loose ends and securing our permit through the Tourism Ministry. With Nima’s facilitation we were able to only spend one day in Katmandu.

October 7th we flew to Lukla and our 6-day trek to base camp began. Our route to base camp was over the Zetra La pass into the Hinku valley, the same as the access to climb Meru Peak. Unlike the Kumbu Valley there is very little available in the Hinku valley. You can get beer, whiskey, and some snack food at a great expense but not much else.

Our trek to base camp was comfortable over six days, which we choose based on our porters pace. Base camp was about 90 minutes walk above Digkharka on the medial moraine south of the Hinku glacier (also known as the Hongku Nup glacier). It was an ideal base camp in many ways with bouldering and sandy camping. Water was the biggest issue, as we had to hike 20 minutes to find water at an alpine lake with no good camping near by.

After a few days of rest we started the two days of double carries to establish advanced base camp. It was tough travel up the loose moraine over three to four miles. This was perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the trip. Another day of rest at ABC and we pushed up through the icefall to scout the face and acclimatize. We camped on a ridge at 19,500’ for a cold night.

We went back down to base camp to rest a few days. On October 24th we moved back up to ABC and organized for our attempt. The following day we moved to the base of the face through the icefall. Freddie and I scouted out the bergshrund while Ben set up camp. Conditions were great with firm neve.

We were joined at this point be two Japanese climbers heading for the same face but a different line. The Jiri jiri boys were heading for a direct line on the north face that they had tried a few years earlier. On the 26th of October we set out predawn and we could see the headlamps of the Jiri Jiri boys heading out as well. The plan was to climb all day and gain the N.E. Ridge where it seemed we would have better luck creating a bivy. The temps were cold but conditions were good. The biggest challenge came in finding good anchors. The neve snow was twelve inches thick and often over slab rock or thin ice. We did find some good ice for anchors and tried rock gear as much as possible. The last three pitches to the ridge had some mixed climbing which was mostly exciting because of the lack of good cracks for gear and hard to get anchors. After about 16 hours of climbing we gained the ridge and spent a couple of hours creating a bivy and by hour 18 we were settled into our BD first light tent.

Our bivy system was two Mountain Hardwear Banshee 0 degree bags zipped together in a first light tent. It was very tight but warm. It did not provide enough comfort to actually sleep. The following day we traversed over the East face runnels. We climbed the first runnel for four pitches then tunneled to the next one and gained the summit ridge after two more pitches. Once on the ridge we had two hours of slow plodding in knee-deep snow to reach the summit. We topped out at 7pm just in time to watch sunset on Everest.

We down climbed the ridge and did six rappels back to our traverse and our bivy (we left our bivy kit in place on the summit push). The summit effort was a 12-hour round trip day. The following day we continued down the North face finding v-threads and several rock anchors of pins and stoppers. After 14 rappels we back at the base of the face. As we pulled our ropes we could see the Jiri Jiri boys pulling their ropes. They had come within 200m of the summit on their direct line but cold, no sleep and a stove that did not function turned them around.

We returned to base camp and made arrangements to head home.

The expedition took 26 days from Katmandu to Katmandu. The weather was perfect but very cold. Everything went as scheduled and we feel fortunate to have had no cold injuries and very little illness.

We would like to thank the Mugs Stump Award for helping make our expedition possible.

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