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ExplorersWeb Week in Review

Nov 20, 2004 13: 54 EST
The big news hit early Monday and they were anything but pretty.

Connecticut Everest: "George hook a blow with his right hand into the side of his wife's head" Read about the guy who climbed Everest 6 times, and beat up his Sherpa wife in Base Camp. Read about his clients fearing for their lives, oxygen stashes being robbed, Sherpas demanding money in high camps, porn in mess tents, a 15 years old Sherpani slapped by her expedition leader - and a whole bunch of climbers looking the other way.

By contrast, Everest: Golden Camera prize for Serac Films Michael Brown and Serac films won another prize this week, with 'Farther than the eye can see.' Saturday, Michael did a live speech on the Festival website! (Find it in the links section)

This summer, Erik and Michael also visited the Braille Without Borders school for the blind in Lhasa, at almost 12,000 feet on the windswept Tibetan plateau. The blind Everest summiteer Erik selected a small group of six highly motivated blind students to teach his specially adapted hiking and climbing techniques. Before the school was opened the official word from China was that there was no blindness there, it was a struggle to keep the school going but now things are slowly changing.

Cerro Torre East Face SUMMIT! "It's sheer hell" Ermanno, Alex and Giacomo summited Cerro Torre East Face on Sunday at 9 PM local time. It was a tough climb - the climbers spent the night right on the summit, descending early morning, in rapidly deteriorating weather.

ExWeb series: The meaning of winter in 8000+ climbing Winter is approaching Himalaya and Simone Moro, Piotr Morawski, Jacek Jawien, Dariusz Zaluski and Jan Szulc are leaving only 2 weeks from now for another winter attempt of Shisha. In this series, we examine the concept of the Calendar winter - and check who did what and when in cold conditions.

Antarctica's Vinson: A not so new line? A Spanish team claimed a first on a route opened by Conrad Anker. Damien Gildea noticed the mistake, we called the guys up, and the Spaniards agreed to the possibility of Anker having climbed the line before. That possibility was confirmed as a fact by Conrad yesterday.

Slovenian new line on Nangpai Gosum 1 SE Urban Golob was the expedition leader of a recent successful new line in Himalaya. Urban's team snatched the 7000er Nangpai Gosum SE line. They named their ascent the Slovenian route VI, 5 M, 1550 meters.

K2: The spell is broken - crowds of climbers expected for 2005 After two seasons without a single summit, summer of 2004 was a record year on the mountain. New strategies, fixed ropes, use of O2, improved weather reports…got close to 50 climbers to the top of the "Mountaineer's Mountain". 2004 was more significant for K2 than anyone could have imagined. The spell was broken as human ingenuity tamed another frontier. Now climbers hurry to add the Savage Mountain to their books.

Norwegian stars for K2 in 2005 Norwegian lady climber Cecilie Skog summited Everest North May 23 this year. While on Everest, her boyfriend Rolf Bae (Antarctic crossing star) and climbing partner Trym Atle Sæland mapped out a new route on Shisha. Now they are off for K2 next summer, led by a Norwegian polar veteran: Simen Mørdre, brother of Sjur Mørdre (aka the "Murder brothers"). They'll climb the South/South-East Spur (Abruzzi) and will try to climb as light as possible, probably merging the Mørdre brother's skills of lightweight polar travel with modern mountaineering.

Third Rowing rescue/tow in one week After two rowers were rescued last week, a third boat set out Friday. But the guys had barely launched their oars - before they too, were in trouble. The guys called for a tow due to a foot steering problem. Private yacht "Holly Dee" set out to help, but had to turn around due to seasickness. Before the Coast Guard could reach them, the team decided to continue to Barbados, as the problem turned out manageable.

Roslin: Departure! She is off again, only this time in company of boyfriend Dal: "Here we go! Three months until South Georgia Island. (SE of Cape Horn)."

ExWeb Series: The Coast Guard and "the other" ocean travelers In this 2 part series, we describe how the Spanish police is not searching for rowers in trouble as their first priority. Instead, they look for small boats or rafts with much more unhappy passengers, whose dead bodies are washed up on the Spanish shores each week. And only a few days ago, November 17, 22 people died while trying to reach the US coast in a ragged, little boat from the Dominick Republic.

Antarctica Wrap-up A bad cut in Devon's hand has ended his South Pole expedition and led to some dramatic team changes. The two supported teams of ALE and Northwinds are now merged into one 6 person team with Denise as leader. Damien & co got to Vinson BC, and Perpetual Challenge was flown to their starting point at 85'S. But the guys in Punta were still stuck in bad weather.

Antarctica: Word from Kites on Ice! The boldest SP expedition of 2004, these kids, their mom and two friends are skiing from Hercules Inlet unsupported to the Pole, where they will get a resupply, turn around and ski/sail back. The guys have reached farthest, currently at 82'S, and are doing voice dispatches daily.

Antarctica Live 2004 "No doubt the explorers of 2015, if there is anything left to explore, will carry pocket wireless telephones, fitted with wireless telescopes". (Thomas Orde-Lees (Shackleton's Endurance Expedition, 1915). Voice dispatches, automated expedition tracking map with altitudes, written reports and live images - never before has Antarctica been so Live as this year of 2004. A recently published book "Extreme Digital Photography" by Jonathan Chester, features much on ExplorersWeb and the unique Contact Technology, 10 years before Shackleton's deadline!

Expedition Siberia: It's time to face the cold! The Antarctic expeditions are cold. But these guys could soon get even colder. Siberia has measured among the coldest temperatures in the world, and Wednesday morning, Johan and Micke headed into the East Siberian wilderness, to face the cold of a Siberian winter. "What, are you going to wear that? No fur? You are going to freeze to death!" said the locals. There could be something to it - already the next day, the guys found themselves by the fire in a tiny hunting cabin "with these fantastically friendly Siberian bush men. They've fed us and given us plenty of warmth."

Minisizing Skype and going War Trekking Picking up free hotspots is getting easier than ever and can be done even in Kathmandu these days. Kathmandu University is offering wireless web-service in front of the Library building. Picking up a connection with your tiny PDA is cheap (read free) and easy. Once you are connected it’s possible to send and receive e-mails, browse the web, SKYPE your friends and even make cheap VOIP phone calls anywhere in the world.

Breakthroughs in Space tech This week had several notable records: ESA’s SMART-1 is successfully making its first orbit of the Moon. The ESA new solar-electric propulsion technology is 10 times more efficient that the usual chemical systems employed when traveling in space. For the first time ever, gravity-assist maneuvers, which use the gravitational pull of the approaching Moon, were performed by an electrically propelled spacecraft. The success of this test is important to the prospects for future interplanetary missions using ion engines.

Another test was autonomous positioning - using images of celestial objects taken by the AMIE camera on SMART-1 as references. The technique will allow spacecraft to know where they are in space and how fast they are moving, limiting the need for intervention by ground control teams.

Deep-space communication SMART-1 also carried out deep-space communication tests, consisting of testing radio transmissions at very high frequencies compared to traditional radio frequencies. With a Laser Link experiment, SMART-1 tested the feasibility of pointing a laser beam from Earth at a spacecraft moving at deep-space distances for future communication purposes.

NASA speed record Their new scramjet engine, taking oxygen from the atmosphere instead of carrying liquid O2 to ignite its fuel, broke its own speed record; at nearly Mach 9.8, or 7,000 mph at about 110,000 feet. That's fast enough to get anywhere on the globe in two hours, or cross the Atlantic Ocean in half an hour.

Magnetic Storm: Space Station is falling And you thought that the seasonal solar flares were a drag on your sat phone. Think again. The guys in the Space Station were hit by the past strong magnetic storm - and they are...falling! Throughout the past week, the ISS descended by 300m daily and by almost eight kilometers since the end of September. The Russians plan to raise the ISS' orbit.

X-Prize runner: Join the Space Van and Earn Cosmic miles! The PanAero joined the XPrize contest with a scaled down version of Condor-X, but there is a better version - the Space Van! Anyone keen to contribute financially can be a bronze, silver or gold sponsor and, best of all, send the money through PayPal! But that's not all; you’ll also be earning Cosmic Kilometers, an equivalent of the frequent-flier’s miles provided by airlines.

Read these stories - and more! - at ExplorersWeb.com

Image: Shisha Pangma expedition - Kent Harvey near the summit of 'Feather Duster', © 1999 Michael Brown, Serac Films.

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