Drama at the North Col

“North Col calling ABC over; North Col calling ABC…” the radio in the mess tent about 10 feet away from my tent at ABC crackled to life. I checked my watch - 6:45am. Crap. An unscheduled call that early in the morning meant problems. Looking up at he dark shadows on the roof of my tent I suspected that the evenings heavy snowfall and accompanying winds had something to do with it..!

I switched on the radio for a quick chat with Stephen to see what the conditions were like on the North Col. The news was not good. Whilst Chris, Nick and I had decided to descend to ABC yesterday, Stephen, Jason and Salam had decided to stay up to crack 7500m. Last night a 200 kph storm swept through the North Col camp obliterating our tents as well as those of the other teams. Fortunately the boys had not been hurt! The scene 600m above ABC sounded like carnage with reports of gear being blown around camp and tents shredded. The boys had spent a sleepless night trying to stop our tents and gear from blowing off the North Col and moving down suits, food, gear etc. to the main storage tent, which had been securely roped down.

Zac and Chris quickly sprang to life and an inventory of destroyed and still standing tents was taken and a plan was hatched to get all the tents secured and the boys moved down to the safety of ABC.

The Sherpas quickly drew straws to see who would be going back up the North Col to conduct damage control and repair tents where possible. I didn’t envy them in the slightest - on a scale of 1-10, where 1 was ‘not keen’ and 10 was ‘super keen’, my enthusiasm would have featured at about a -8...

When the boys made it down to the safety of ABC, Stephen shared the well documented footage of the disastrous night on the Col. The tents which had been destroyed looked like they had been slashed to bits by a giant samurai sword. The ‘Seven Summits’ team mess tent (which had been the envy of everyone on the North Col) lay in a yellow shriveled heap with bits of rope flapping in the breeze…

Apparently the jet stream had been extremely close to the summit that night hence the high winds. Needless to say, we owe Stephen, Jason and Salam a cold beer upon our return in Kathmandu for their heroic efforts in rescuing our camp!