August 27, 2014
Cho Oyu Sherpas load the truck in Kathmandu for another adventure to Tibet (Ang Jangbu Sherpa)
We have been doing Cho Oyu (8,201m) since 1995, and since then have done 24 trips (22 of them successful) to the world’s 6th highest peak. This year marks our 25th expedition, and we are looking forward to getting started. IMG guides Mike Hamill and Josh McDowell are now in Kathmandu to receive the team and do gear checks. Every year the trip is a bit different, and for 2014 traveling to Base Camp in Tibet is complicated by a massive landslide that wiped out some of the road (and killed over 150 people) near the Nepal town of Barisbise on the way to Kodari (the Nepal town on the Tibet border). The road is not yet rebuilt, so the IMG team and all their gear will need to travel on foot through this area.
Ang Jangbu reports that the plan is to get all the gear to Kodari ahead of members. The sherpa team loaded the truck this afternoon for an early morning departure to Lamosangu with Nima Karma, Ang Karma and Fura Gyalzen. They are being met by Raju from Kodari with porters and they will start portering to Barabise and on to Kodari on different trucks from Barabise.   The first truck will then return to Kathmandu tomorrow afternoon and we will load the remaining loads on the truck including member base camp duffels tomorrow evening and depart early next morning with 2 other sherpas, Mingma Chhiring and Mingma Tenzing.
The team will do their group dinner at Hotel Tibet night of the 29th, and then will then depart 4AM Saturday morning for Lamosangu with Mingma Dorge, Kaji, and sirdar Phunuru. It will take them 3-4 hours to walk past the landslide area to Barabise, and then get on another bus to Kodari. Hopefully they will reach the border by 2:30PM before Chinese immigration close down.  If they are delayed and don’t get to border before Chinese immigration/customs shuts down then they might end up spending the night at Kodari.
Eric Simonson