Australian climber 'shattered' after Everest tragedy
An Australian climber who survived the deadly Mount Everest blizzard over the weekend, said severe frostbite is the extent of his physical woes. "But emotionally, I am shattered and upset," he said.
Michael Groom, a 36-year-old lecturer from Brisbane, was evacuated from base camp at 17,700 feet by helicopter and flown to the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu Wednesday. Groom was a member of an international expedition led by veteran mountaineer Rob Hall, one of eight climbers killed in a treacherous storm that hit the mountain Friday afternoon. "[Hall] has to be dead. He is dead," Groom told Reuters news service by telephone before he left for Bangkok on his way home. Hall "is presumed to be in a crevasse near the south summit" of Mount Everest, Groom said. Hall was last heard from on a walkie-talkie, through which he was connected to the base camp and his home in New Zealand via satellite. "His voice was very weak and we could tell he was cold," Groom said. Groom, who lost toes to frostbite on earlier climbs, said he was a little frostbitten and his stumps were "quite sore and going blue." The snowstorm killed four climbers from Groom's team, American expedition leader Scott Fischer, plus three Indian climbers who scaled the mountain from the Tibetan side. Five climbing expeditions were caught in the ferocious blizzard on the mountain. On Monday, two other climbers from separate expeditions, Taiwan's Gau Ming-ho (known in mountaineering circles as Makalu Gao) and American Seaborn Beck Weathers, were rescued by helicopter from the mountain at 19,100 feet. Groom, whose second success on Everest on May 10 came three years to the day after he scaled the mountain in 1993, is a veteran of four of the eight 8,000-meter peaks in Nepal. He said he still plans to climb two smaller mountains in the Everest region. "But just now that is the farthest thing in my mind," he said. This story written by Reuters correspondents. |
