The MountainWorld™ Blog

Highest concert in the world...Everest ROCKS!!

I am sitting in the shadow of Nuptse in the small village of Gorak Shep at 17,000 feet in the Khumbu Valley of Nepal. Our team is quite happy after an incredibly successful time on Kala Pattar yesterday afternoon.

Since my last message from Namche Bazaar, we had several days of wonderful trekking up the Khumbu Valley, stopping in Pangboche, Dingboche, and Lobuche before finally reaching Gorak Shep and Kala Pattar. There are far too many highlights to cover all of them here, but one of the tops was having a private audience with the high lama of Thyangboche Monastery - the spiritual heart of the Khumbu - and watching Mike, Cy, Glenn, Jaime, Nick, and Slim belt out "Give Me Love" with all the passion and emotion the song and moment deserved.

There have been musical interludes along nearly every step of the path to Gorak Shep, all of them emotional, touching, and unique. But, the highlight of them all came yesterday afternoon as our team trekked from Lobuche at 16,000 feet up the lateral morraine of the Khumbu Glacier to Gorak Shep. After a quick lunch in this tough, high-altitude place, we continued upward to the tip-top of Kala Pattar. Wind and cold notwithstanding, we set up mic stands, plugged in guitars and Slim's stand-up snare and the highest concert in the world began with a crowd of about 70 people.

We all sat (well, many of us did, although Damien, Stosh, Alex, and I were pretty busy capturing the moments on film) under the watchful eye of Everest as the gang sang amazing songs. I was more than impressed by their stamina and tenacity and ability to play music at 18,536 feet in 25-30 mph winds, but play they did for about 30 minutes. It was an amazing, emotional time, and quite a joy to see the dreams of Mike Peters and James Chippendale (and indeed all 37 of us) come to fruition.

Tomorrow, we head down valley to Pheriche and in 4 days time will be back in Kathmandu preparing for the finale concert in Kathmandu's Durbar Square. There, the stage will be shared with several Nepali bands. It should be another amazing time in what has become a long string of emotional, moving, and impactful moments. And, most importantly, Everest Rocks has succeeded in its mission of raising needed funds for the Bhaktapur Cancer Relief Hospital. Great to be a part of a team with a higher mission than the mountains.

As the Zen koan says: When you reach the summit, keep on climbing...

-Jake Norton
(Please be sure to visit www.everestrocks.com for podcasts, images, and daily dairies from the trek!)

Rocking in Namche Bazaar

Due to power issues, I was not able to send this update from several days ago...Enjoy it, and I'll write more in a moment... ___________________________________________________

As I sit this morning watching the soft light of dawn splash elegantly on the jagged ridges of Kwangde, Numbur, Thamserku, and Kusum Kangguru, I am easily reminded of why I come back to this mountain paradise again and again: Simply put, spending time in the high mountains reduces life to the bare essentials. The superfluous elements which we often find ourselves concerned with and stressed out about are revealed for just what they are: superfluous elements. In the mountains, life becomes simple: take a breath, take a step, eat, drink, breathe, and enjoy the company of good friends - some new, some old. And, most importantly, to live in the moment, for as the adage goes, life is short.

Being on this trip with cancer survivors, caregivers, and concerned people has only served to bring that point home for me. Life is indeed short. At times it can be harsh. It can hurt. It'll make us cry. But, it is all we have, so we must not forget to live it, to embrace each moment as if it were our last. We must laugh hard and at times cry harder.

This afternoon, Nick Harper delivered a stunning and emotional impromptu performance of a new song he had not shared before, one of remembrance of his mother who passed away from cancer some years back. Our group of 37 plus many other onlookers shared Nick's emotion as he sang on the deck of the Everest View Hotel above Syangboche. Everest was hiding, but no one cared. The moment was fresh, raw, and real...and exactly as it should have been.

The stories of survival and hardship, joy and tragedy we have shared on this trip have underscored the need to embrace life, for tomorrow it could be far different. Our group here knows that truth better than most...and is living it today.

May we all try to live life fully, to embrace each day as if it were our last, to live, love, and laugh with all that we are, for who knows what lays behind the next turn in the trail.

The sun has now rizen above the massive wall of Thamserku, breathing life and heat into the hamlet of Namche. We're off to Tashinga today on our journey upward, so I'll leave you with a few last thoughts from those more eloquent than I am:

Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life.
- Sogyal Rinpoche

Look to this day, For it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence; the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision, But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore to this day, such is the salutation of the dawn.
- The Sufi

Carpe diem.

-Jake Norton-

Cancer: uniting us all...

Yesterday was an intense day to say the least. I have spent quite a bit of time in Nepal over the years, living, working, studying, and teaching as well as climbing. And, in those times, I have come face to face with the myriad of misfortunes that befall so many people in this Himalayan kingdom: leprosy, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, abuse, and the cumulative effects of extreme poverty.

But, yesterday was the first time I visited cancer wards in Nepal, and it was an eye opener.

On some level, the other ailments mentioned above cause certain angst and sympathy, making even the hardest of hearts soften, even the tightest of wallets loosen a bit. But, they are also distant for most of us. As fortunate members of the relatively affluent West, diseases like leprosy are distant, are not something we encounter often, if at all.

But, cancer is different. There are few if any worldwide who have not felt the effects of cancer in their lives: friend, family, cousin, uncle, brother, sister, mother. Cancer touches us all, regardless of our skin color, our religion, or our geographic location. It is, in many ways, a tragic equalizer, a horrific disease which ties us all together in some way.

But, of course, it only equalizes in some ways. Even the might of cancer does not level the economic playing field, nor subsequently the treatment options.

And this was more than evident as we visited the Kanthi Childrens and Bhaktapur Cancer Hospitals yesterday in the Valley. Throughout the pediatric oncology ward at Kanthi, doctors struggled to save young lives with rudimentary equipment and paltry funds in harrowing conditions. Likewise, at Bhaktapur, Dr. Bharal works tirelessly to combat the disease ravaging his many patients, young and old.

As I watched James Chippendale - himself a cancer survivor - visit the patients, talk to the doctors, and laugh with the children, I could see his passion and dedication grow along with his understanding of the magnitude of the problem facing Nepal.

James, Shannon, and Everest Rocks are more committed than ever to help change the face of cancer treatment here in Nepal.

It is an exciting and trying time, but to know that lives will be changed through our activities here...well, that makes all the difference.

- Jake Norton is an Everest climber, guide, photographer, writer, and motivational speaker from Colorado.

Everest Rocks begins...

Another journey has begun...and the wonders of modern communication are already at work. I'm sitting on the floor in Bangkok's new, amazing Suvarnabhumi Airport writing in from a fast wireless connection. Amazing.

Anyway, I'm traveling over here early with the Love Hope Strength Foundation co-founder James Chippendale and Executive Director Shannon Foley.

We'll be in Kathmandu for a few days, enjoying one of my favorite places on earth and getting set up for the Everest Rocks! trek to Everest Basecamp. With an amazing group of passionate people working hard to raise money and awareness for Love Hope Strength and for cancer, it will be quite a trip! And, if you didn't already know, there's quite a rock side to the Everest Rocks! trip...accompanying us along the way will be a host of amazing musicians including:

• Mike Peters of The Alarm
• Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats
• Billy Duffy of The Cult
• Dave Wakeling of English Beat
• Jimmy Barnes
• Karl Dietel of The Samples
• Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze
• Cy Curnin and Jamie West-Oram of The Fixx
• And many others!

It will be a great time, a great trek, and all for a great cause!

So, take a moment and visit the Love Hope Strength Foundation website, and follow along with the trip at the official Everest Rocks! website, too.

And, of course, keep checking back here for images, video, and dispatches from the trek to Everest Basecamp!!

- Jake Norton is an Everest climber, guide, photographer, writer, and motivational speaker from Colorado.

Did Mallory & Irvine make it to the summit of Everest?

I've posted quite a bit on this blog about the enduring mystery of Everest pioneers George Mallory & Andrew Irvine, and have been fortunate enough to take an active role in the story, going to Everest in 1999, 2001, and 2004 to search for clues and answers to this greatest of mountaineering mysteries.

On that first expedition - the 1999 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition - one of our team members was Graham Hoyland, the grand-nephew of Howard Somervell who was on the fateful 1924 Everest expedition. (Somervell reached nearly 28,000 feet without oxygen climbing with Teddy Norton on June 4, 1924, and also loaned Mallory his Kodak Vestpocket (VPK) camera for the final summit bid as Mallory had forgotten his at Basecamp.)

Unfortunately, in 1999, Graham fell ill with altitude sickness and was not able to take part directly in our discovery of Mallory's remains on May 1. But, since then, he has taken a very active role in putting the pieces of the story together, including developing clothing replicas and returning to the mountain on several occasions.

Just this week, Graham has unveiled a new theory on Mallory & Irvine's final summit bid and generated much media attention in the process in conjunction with a presentation to the Royal Geographic Society in London.

The crux of this theory, which puts Mallory & Irvine on the top of the world some 29 years before Hillary and Tenzin, hangs on Noel Odell's final sighting of the pair high on the Northeast Ridge and conjecture that Mallory would have chosen to forgo the difficulties of the Second Step and climb instead below to the Third Step.

While I, like Graham, believe Mallory & Irvine could have reached the summit in 1924 (and I like to believe they did reach the top, a theory for which I have no proof), I doubt Graham's new theory really breaks any ground.

If you take a good look at the interactive Zoomify panorama of the Northeast Ridge I put up on my website a while back - which shows the First, Second and Third Steps as well as the Summit Pyramid - you can see that bypassing the Second Step by traversing below it (which is the crux of Graham's new theory) is not really a possibility. The daunting band of gray rock which forms the Second Step continues all the way to the Great Couloir with only a small gully breaking through just above the Second Step. And, given that this couloir is composed of down-sloping, rotten rock - characteristic of the upper North Face of Everest - I doubt this would be more feasible than the Second Step itself.

Indeed Teddy Norton, on his attempt on June 4, 1924 with Howard Somervell, traversed below the Northeast Ridge crest trying to find an alternate way to the summit. He found no viable break in the rock bands bypassing the Second Step, and was eventually turned around at 28,165 feet in the Great (Norton) Couloir.

Likewise, in 1933, Percy Wyn-Harris and Lawrence Wager eventually followed Norton's traverse line after backing away from the Second Step and, as with Norton, found no viable passage through the gray band and onto the ridge crest. They turned around at nearly the same spot as Norton 9 years before. Days later, Eric Shipton and Frank Smythe tried the same route with the same results.

George Mallory was a great climber, skilled, insightful, and clever. But, Norton, Wyn-Harris, Wager, Shipton, and Smythe were no slouches and if they could not find a route through the gray band, I doubt Mallory & Irvine could have fared better.

So, while Graham's theory is intriguing and brings this fascinating mystery back into the limelight, I unfortunately think it is but another theory. It unfortunately sheds no more true light on the story than Conrad Anker's assertion that they could not have reached the top given the route challenges.

As I have maintained since 1999, we now know far more about their final days and hours than ever before, but we still have no proof...No proof that they did summit, and likewise no proof that they did not summit.

Anything proclaiming otherwise is simply conjecture.

What do you think?

Did Mallory & Irvine reach the top in 1924?

Does it matter?

- Jake Norton is an Everest climber, guide, photographer, writer, and motivational speaker from Colorado. 

Oprah and the Mountains

I'm not a regular reader of Oprah Winfrey's magazine, O Magazine, but it was passed along to me recently by a colleague who mentioned I should read the final page. It was a regular column in O Magazine entitled "What I Know For Sure", and in it the ever-insightful Oprah had some great thoughts about here recent climb of a mountain near her home in Hawaii.

Now, any of you who visit The MountainWorld Blog regularly know that one of my favorite authors and thinkers is Robert Pirsig, author of the classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and his follow-up book, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals.

In Zen, Pirsig talks in depth about the pace of life while climbing a mountain, and the "correct" way to climb it, focusing on the moment, on each footstep, rather than on the end goal. This way, he says, we learn to enjoy the climb more which, in the end, it what it is all about.

This adage, of course, applies well to life as well as climbing mountains, as Oprah found out on her recent climb. If we focus too much on the end goal, on the distant and oft-elusive summit, we miss the pleasure of the climb, the fascination of the here-and-now. And, in the end, the summit is simply another patch of snow or rock; it's the sides of our mountains where our journey both begins and ends...and endures.

As Oprah wisely notes at the end of her article (echoing the sentiments I always close my Everest keynotes with):

It makes no difference how many peaks you reach if there was no pleasure in the climb...I'm going to spend more time enjoying the view from here.

Wise words, Oprah, and thanks!

- Jake Norton is an Everest climber, guide, photographer, writer, and motivational speaker from Colorado.