Everest Ski Descents – Success & Tragedy

Tragedy appears to have struck on Everest for Swede Tomas Olsson. Together with his team mate, Swede Tormod Granheim the pair were attempting to ski down the Norton Couloir on the North Face. Reporting incredibly bad conditions and extreme fatigue they encountered a 50m rock band at around 8,500m. Whilst abseiling over this obstacle the anchor ripped and Tomas fell. Tormod was forced to return to ABC alone, collecting his friend´s ice axes along the way. There was no sign of the body. Meanwhile fellow Scandinavians Olaf Sundstrom and Martin Letzter, both Swedes, have made a ski-descent of the North side of the world´s highest mountain after summiting on Tuesday. They are attempting to climb up and ski down the (seven) highest summits on each continent. Having reached 6,400m they are now preparing to climb back up to the scene of the accident to help look for Tomas. There have been around 15 ski descents of Everest, only one of them all the way from the summit to BC. Marco Siffredi snowboarded the Norton Couloir in 2001, but died in a fall attempting the steeper Hornbein Couloir just a year later. Check out MountEverest.net for a full account. ———————————————————————– If you have any news worth reporting please contact Matt – matt@planetfear.com / 0114 2969114 ———————————————————————–

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