Cross Country, issue 134, March/April 2011
Squash Falconer is going for the big one – heading to Everest to climb and fly the world’s highest mountain. By Ed Ewing
Talking to Squash I begin to feel that actually, maybe Everest wouldn’t be such a big deal after all. She has it all broken down into stages: “I’ll go to Kathmandu at the end of March. Then we fly to Lukla airport on the second of April, from there we trek to Base Camp at 5,600m – 1,000m higher than Mont Blanc.
“For acclimatisation you then go up to Camp One and back down again to rest a day or two. Then you go up to Camp One and maybe stay the night, come back down again, rest, and so on until you get to Camp Two or Camp Three.
“Then you come back down to Base Camp. And then you come back down even further and you rest there a good week or so.”
That brings you into the first week of May. “Then you start looking at going for the summit push. It’s a night at Camp One, a night at Camp Two, a night at Camp Three and then you get to Camp Four where you have a few hours and then you push through. It can be anything between four and seven days.”
Historically there is a seasonal sweet spot in the Everest climbing calendar around 20 May when the weather is warmer, the jet stream rises above the summit and the winds get lighter. Squash wants to be on the summit on such a day, because she wants to be the first...
Read the full article in Cross Country magazine issue 134
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