Although I'm not here to climb it is always exciting to see Mt Everest. You really cannot appreciate how massive it really is until you see it looming over its giant neighbours.
Everest is on the left and Lhotse (4th highest peak in the world) is on the right.
It's very common to see that tail of snow blowing off the top of Everest - they call it spin drift here.
Actually this morning (Friday) looks like a perfect day for a summit attempt. No cloud, clear skies and very little wind. The climbers would have been to the summit and on the way back down by the time I took this photo (10am). Although i couldn't see any on the summit ridge with my binoculars.
Normally they would have set off from their high camp (just under 8000m) to push for the summit (8848m) at around 1am or even earlier in some cases bearing temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees!!
More than 850m ascent in one day is a lot of effort at any altitude but doing it 5 miles above sea level is something else. The air is so thin that there is less than 40% the oxygen content that we are used to breathing everyday.
I wish all the people attempting Everest this season the best of luck and who knows I may even get some photos of some of them as I pass by Everest Base Camp which at this time of year is like a small town!
Michael Scully, Appco Group Deutschland
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