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GI The Agony and The Ecstasy
14:49 p.m. EDT Jul 30, 2003
GI has had plenty of expedition action over the past week. The update:
Adventure Consultants
By July 23, members of the Adventure Consultants team had reached Camp 3 in their acclimatization efforts prior to a summit attempt. However, deteriorating conditions prompted a descent to Base Camp, where they’ve remained ever since in an agonizing vigil for “summit weather.” The wait is tougher knowing that several people battled the serious weather to attain the summit of GI over the past week.
The Adventure Consultants team was hoping to ascend to Camp 1 yesterday to begin to position itself for a summit bid on Friday, yet found visibility too poor to make it through the icefall. A forecast of bad weather through the weekend will delay their summit attempt another several days. The team needs to leave the mountain by August 10th.
Araceli Segarra and Hector Ponce de Leon
Battling high winds on the July 26th, Araceli Segarra and Hector Ponce de Leon made their summit attempt on GI. Blowing snow kept covering the tracks of the expeditions that were ahead of Segarra and de Leon, necessitating that de Leon break trail much of the way. Arriving at a section of fixed ropes at about 7900m, Segarra reports they were met by an avalanche of falling rock and ice chunks as a seven-member team descended from the summit on fixed ropes. Segarra said she and de Leon waited for 40 minutes for the other expedition to descend. De Leon sustained a head injury from falling rocks, but they intended to continue their ascent. However the other expedition removed the fixed ropes and, combined with the delay and bad weather, Segarra and de Leon decided to turn around and head down the mountain.
No word yet on whether Segarra and de Leon will continue on to K2.
Hungarian Gasherbrums Expedition
The Hungarian Expedition achieved its goal of summiting both GI and GII this season when nine of the twelve team members summited GI last weekend. Five members summited GII on July 19th.
Image of G1 BC courtesy of Adventure Consultants
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