Flying Off Everest

by Dave Costello

  * Flooding on the Dudh Kosi and other rivers in the Himalaya is intermittently caused by a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF), in which a glacial lake contained by continually shifting ice and moraine suddenly bursts, releasing a staggering amount of water in a matter of minutes. One on the Dudh Kosi in August 1985 had a flow of 11,000 cubic meters per second—seventeen times the average flow for that time of year. A 30-foot-high wall of water, mud, and debris swept away bridges and houses and in places even gouged out an entirely new river channel.

  * The highest peaks on each of the seven continents, also known as the Seven Summits, are Everest, 29,035 feet (Asia); Aconcagua, 22,834 feet (South America); McKinley (aka. Denali), 20,320 feet (North America); Kilimanjaro, 19,340 feet (Africa); Elbrus, 18,510 feet (Europe); Vinson Massif, 16,067 feet (Antarctica); and Kosciuszko, 7,310 feet (Australia). Kosciuszko’s status as highest point in Australia is up for some debate. Many have argued that the highest point in Oceania, the group of lands that includes Australia and is technically part of the same continent, is not Kosciuszko but rather the 16,535-foot Carstensz Pyramid in the Indonesian province of Irian Barat.

  * A SPOT Messenger is a handheld GPS unit that automatically relays the device’s coordinates via e-mail or text message to anyone signed up to “follow” it. It also provides a link to the device’s location on Google Maps, and it is capable of sending a distress signal to the GEOS Rescue Coordination Center. In Babu and Lakpa’s case, the device would allow Phinney to track their progress from San Francisco.

  * Gondwana, also called Gondwanaland, was an ancient supercontinent that incorporated present-day South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica. It was fully assembled some 600 million years ago by Late Precambrian time, and the first stage of its breakup began in the Early Jurassic period, about 180 million years ago.

  † The Tethys Sea was a tropical body of salt water that separated the supercontinent of Laurasia in the north from Gondwana in the south during much of the Mesozoic Era (251 to 65.5 million years ago).

  * Although Mount Everest currently holds the record for being the world’s highest mountain at 29,035 feet, the ninth-highest mountain, Nanga Parbat (26,660 feet), at the far western end of the Himalaya, is the fastest rising and may one day stand taller.

  * The current height of Mount Everest, calculated with lasers and Doppler satellite transmissions, is generally agreed to be 29,035 feet.

  * Today, the official Nepali designation for Mt. Everest is Sagarmatha, “goddess of the sky.” The name was rarely, if ever, used before 1960. At that time there was a border dispute with China, and Nepal’s prime minister, B. P. Koirala, believed it would help Nepal assert its claim to the southern side of Everest if there were a widely recognized Nepali name for it. He chose Sagarmatha at the suggestion of his advisors, and the national park that encompasses the Nepali side of the mountain still bears the name.

  † Founded in 1972, the Mountain Institute is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC, with offices in West Virginia, Nepal, and Peru (home to the world’s oldest, tallest, and longest mountain ranges, respectively). It is committed to economic development in the mountains, conservation of mountain environments, and support for mountain cultures.

  * There’s some debate over which American expedition, exactly, reached the North Pole first. Robert E. Peary sent word from Indian Harbour, Labrador, in April 1909, that he and his companions had reached the pole first. The news was printed on the front page of the New York Times on September 7. A week prior, however, the New York Herald had printed a front-page headline of its own, stating that Dr. Frederick A. Cook, an American explorer who, after having spent more than a year wandering in the Arctic, was given up for dead, had returned and claimed to have reached the pole in April 1908—a full year before Peary. The argument is still technically up for debate. Neither claim has been either proved or disproved, even after a full reexamination of both expeditions’ records, which was commissioned by the National Geographic Society in 1988.

  * The four mountains whose summits are even farther away from earth’s center than Everest (3,965.8 miles from the planet’s core), are Tanzania’s 19,341-foot Kilimanjaro (3,966 miles), Ecuador’s 19,347-foot Cotopaxi (3,966.9 miles), Peru’s 22,139-foot Huascaran (3,967.1 miles), and Ecuador’s 20,565-foot Chimborazo (also 3,967.1 miles, but about 82 feet farther out than Huascaran). All numbers are approximate.

  * In 1999 American climber Conrad Anker found Mallory’s body on a ledge at 27,000 feet. Evidence suggests that Mallory, at least, didn’t make it to the summit before perishing, but no one will ever really know for sure. Andrew Irvine’s body was never found.

  * Hillary and Norgay agreed to not tell anyone who had made it to the top of Everest first. Norgay said, “It is a foolish question. The answer means nothing… Mountaineers understand that there is no sense to such a question; that when two men are on the same rope they are together, and that is all there is to it.” Once they arrived back in Kathmandu, they both signed a public statement stating that they had “reached the summit almost together.” Later, after much harassment, Norgay acknowledged that Hillary “stepped on top first. And I stepped up after him.”

  * A chorten is a religious monument, typically made of stone and often containing sacred relics; it is also called a stupa.

  † Mani stones are small, flat rocks that are hand-carved with Sanskrit symbols denoting the Tibetan Buddhist invocation Om mani padme hum. They are piled along the middle of trails to form long, low mani walls. Buddhist protocol dictates that travelers always pass mani walls on the left.

  * Cwm (pronounced “coom”) is a Welsh word for a bowl-shaped valley. It was conferred on the upper reaches of the Khumbu Glacier by the 1921 English reconnaissance expedition, the first Westerners to see it.

  * The human body can actually “adapt” to functioning at altitude, where there are significantly less oxygen molecules in each breath, through a process called acclimatization. The act of inhaling less oxygen naturally stimulates an increase in breathing. The kidneys then begin to unload bicarbonate to compensate, and the body releases more of the hormone erythropoietin to stimulate red blood cell production, which enables the body to literally carry more oxygen. This adaptation can take many days, although up to 80% occurs in the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours.

  * A bergschrund is a deep crevasse that delineates a glacier’s upper terminus, marking the point where the ice slides away from the steeper wall immediately above, leaving a gap between the glacier and rock. Whereas a crevasse can be only a few hundred feet deep at most, there is no limit to how deep a bergschrund can go.

  † Fifteen aluminum ladders were used in 2011 to negotiate the icefall, fewer than normal.

  * In 2010 a thirteen-year-old boy from Big Bear, California, named Jordan Romero became the youngest person to make the summit, ousting the previous record holder, Nepal’s Temba Sheri, who climbed to the top at the age of sixteen. In 2013 eighty-year-old Yuichiro Miura claimed the title for the oldest person to have summited, ousting the previous record holder, who was seventy-six. Miura had summited twice before, each time earning himself the title of oldest person to summit Everest.

  * According to the SPOT website, Everest itself lies within an area of “reduced or no coverage available within a 20 minute period.” It’s impossible to say for certain what, exactly, caused Babu and Lakpa’s device to malfunction almost immediately after takeoff, since numerous factors can scramble a GPS signal. However, considering that the handheld unit they were using was trying to communicate with four separate satellites orbiting the earth at a height of about 11,500 miles, traveling at approximately 9,000 miles per hour in different directions, while Babu and Lakpa were simultaneously flying over Everest, it would have been more surprising if it had worked.

  * Paramotor is a generic name for a motorized paraglider, typically propelled by a large fan mounted to the frame in which the pilot sits.

  * Babu
and Lakpa never actually applied for a world record attempt through the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the Swiss governing body that manages all paragliding and hang gliding record keeping. Therefore they didn’t receive an official “world record” for their flight over Everest, which, indeed, went a bit higher than both Jean-Marc Boivin’s and Claire and Zebulon Roche’s. Interestingly, the FAI doesn’t even recognize any free flight world altitude record. According to FAI Record Officer Christine Rousson, “Only records listed in the Sporting Code, Section 7 are permitted.” And the record for who goes the highest while strapped to a paraglider isn’t in that section. It isn’t in any section. So Boivin and the Roches never, technically, held that record either. No one has.

  * The Namgyal Monastery Audio Visual Archive Center’s sole purpose is recording the Dalai Lama’s teachings through both audio and video. It was founded in 1980 and originally operated by the Meridian Trust, a UK-based nonprofit that looks to preserve Tibet’s cultural heritage. The program was taken over by the Namgyal Monastery itself after the trust suddenly took all of its camera equipment back in 1989. Now filmmakers from around the world volunteer their time, helping the monks themselves record His Holiness’s teachings.

  * The “River of Gold” gets its name either from the small flecks of gold that are sometimes panned out of its gravel beds or from the orange-brown color of its waters during the monsoon, when the entire length of the Sun Kosi runs thick and dark with alluvial silt. Likely, the name originated with a little bit of help from both of these attributes.

  * Since the right and left side of a river can switch depending on what direction you’re facing, paddlers typically use the terms “river right” and “river left” to describe directions in relation to facing downstream. This is similar to how actors use the directions “stage right” and “stage left.”

  * It’s worth noting that even if Babu, Lakpa, and Krishna had brought maps of the Ganges with them, it wouldn’t have done them much good. Like the Sun Kosi Fan, the Ganges shifts its course radically through the Bihar almost every year, often cutting completely new channels miles from where it had previously flowed. Even more problematically, the government of India does not allow anyone, Indian or foreign, to buy topographic maps of any region less than 62 miles from the country’s borders, which is exactly where the Ganges flows, so such useless maps don’t even exist.

  * The Indian constitution currently recognizes twenty-two different languages as “official languages.”

  * The Indian constitution currently recognizes twenty-two different languages as “official languages.”

  * Sagar Island is also regularly referred to as Ganga Sagar.

  * A barrage is similar to a dam, but not the same. A dam stores water, creating a massive reservoir behind it, whereas a barrage is simply a weir with gates that are meant to control the flow of a river and help redirect it.

  * A full lunar eclipse, as opposed to a partial lunar eclipse, occurs when the centers of the moon, earth, and sun are in near-perfect alignment. It’s a rare occasion, but when it does happen, the atmosphere also plays a role in how dark a lunar eclipse will be. If the sky is clear, it may allow some refracted light to stray onto the moon’s surface, making the eclipse not quite as dark as it otherwise would be. On the night of June 15, 2011, when Babu, Lakpa, and Krishna were being chased by bandits down the Ganges, the sky was made even darker with the help of the ash thrown into the atmosphere by the recent eruption of Iceland’s most active volcano, Grímsvötn, as well as the ash still present in the atmosphere from the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull.

  * It’s also quite likely that Bangladesh’s growing population has something to do with the decline in the Sunderbans mangrove forests, but the lower water level of the Ganges certainly doesn’t help the situation.

  * At the time of the interview being described, neither Niviuk nor Sup’Air officially sponsored Babu or Lakpa. The same held true as this book was published. However, both companies did sponsor Babu at the 2013 Red Bull X-Alps event, Niviuk by giving him a brand-new wing and Sup’Air by providing him with a new lightweight harness and backpack. Sup’Air also provided for free the harnesses that Babu and Lakpa used on Everest.

  * It’s worth noting that voters for the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Award are allowed to vote multiple times, but only once daily. Boomer actually voted for Babu every day for the duration of the voting period, instead of for himself and Turk.

  † A week later, the twenty-five-year-old Honnold and his climbing partner, Shawn Leary, also managed to climb the Nose on El Capitan three times in one day, breaking the speed record for consecutive ascents on the route.

  * Up until 2012 National Geographic gave the winners of the award a small plaque. It discontinued the plaques the year Babu and Lakpa won the award.

  * In Nepal and India, the term jeep is commonly used to refer to any sport utility vehicle. Babu, Lakpa, and Krishna likely hired a TATA brand jeep, although none of them remember for certain.

  * In the week after they flew from the summit, Babu and Lakpa’s flight from Everest was also briefly mentioned in blog posts on Outsideonline.com, Gadling.com, and GrindTV.com, which repurposed content from the original XCmag.com story and listed Lakpa and Babu’s exploits on the mountain along with other noteworthy happenings on Everest that week. Also featured were Alpine Ascents International expedition members Garrett Madison, Tom Halliday, and Michael Horst, who became the first climbers to stand atop two 8,000-meter peaks within a twenty-four-hour period (summiting Everest and neighboring Lhotse the same day); Bhakta Kumar Rai (aka “Supreme Master God Angel”), who had stayed on top of Everest for thirty-two hours straight just before Babu and Lakpa had flown from the summit; and RMI Expeditions guide Dave Hahn, who summited Everest for the thirteenth time that same week.

  * Himalayan Trailblazer refused to comment for this book.

  † As of December 2012, Lakpa was still paying Himalayan Trailblazer back.

  * The author of this book, Dave Costello, wrote the article about Babu and Lakpa’s expedition for Canoe & Kayak. It was titled “The Ultimate Source to Sea.”

  * The other publications that mentioned Babu and Lakpa’s expedition did so on their websites and simply posted a selection of the four “free” photos Phinney had provided for them to use—a common practice in the magazine world, where editorial online budgets are close to zero.

  † Although VHS video format is the same throughout the world, the electronic signal that is recorded on the cassette varies from country to country. NTSC is the standard used in North America and most of South America. PAL is the predominant standard used everywhere else, including Nepal.

  * At the time of publication, Hanuman Airlines was still available for purchase on XCmag.com, as well as Pevec’s personal website, Fauxreelfilms.com.