Kotaku
Neal Mueller and Chris Grubb, the two guys who brought along DS
s on their climb up Mt. Everest, are back from their trip.
Neal made it to the top on June 2, but a equipment problem prevented Chris from making the ultimate ascent.
I'm planning on doing a phone interview with Neal Wednesday, but to tide you over I asked the excellent PR guy for the two to do send me some quick Q&As to post.
If you have any specific questions you want me to ask tomorrow, make sure you email them to me today. Now check out the end of their story:
What happened at the end?
Well, I loved being there and all the friends that we made with other countries at Base Camp, often through playing video games - the Nintendo DS was very popular... but there's something to be said for sleeping on a real bed and being able to order a pizza...
Chris wasn't able to make a second attempt because the monsoon came and the ice fall was closed... that was the ice fall that was by Camp 1 before the avalanche came and there was no more Camp 1.
But he's not crying over spilt milk (more on what happened to Chris), he's planning to make another attempt through China in 2007. We went the South route and the North route is through China... it's a little steeper in some places and just different trails.
What was it like at the top?
Lonely actually... I've climbed five of the six tallest mountains in the world (seven is Australia in December 2005, a comparatively "small" mountain) with Chris and it was actually kind of lonely not being able to be up there with him...
But it was beautiful... I could see three of four of some of the tallest mountains in the world from the top of Everest. It was a perfectly clear day, and the cloud cover was at 20,000 feet.
I was up at 29,000 feet and so the clouds were below me... and with it being such a perfectly sunny day, you really could almost see forever...
At once, I saw mountains in India, Tibet, Nepal... it was absolutely breathtaking...
The Sherpas (native guides) that went with us believe that their God is actually living on the mountain so it's a very holy place... while they set up prayer flags, I had a chance to change the oxygen tanks so I could spend extra time up there. They were full-body praying for like 20 minutes and it gave me a chance to take some great photos.
Most of the patches that were on our equipment blew off because of the high winds, but I tried to make sure that the Nintendo patch was on there... we'll know for sure once we get the photos back...
I also had extra oxygen because Chris had to go back so I had double the flow rate of what I would have had... so it was an opportunity to not feel rushed.
What happened to Chris?
One of the main jobs of the Sherpas is to make sure that everything is OK with your oxygen equipment... Chris' face mask broke, which can be very scary, and usually the Sherpa is right next to you, he's supposed to stay side-by-side but he wasn't there...
Chris burned up oxygen trying to fix his face mask, and the summit window was closing fast... by then we were so far ahead that he wouldn't have had enough oxygen to make it there and back... you need to have oxygen while you're waiting there so...
Why wasn't the sherpa there?
Good question... (cell phone breaking up)... but he'll take another crack at it...
Is Chris OK with talking about the experience?
Of course, it was incredibly frustrating but he'd be happy to talk about the climb, Nintendo, etc.
It really shows you how one thing going wrong can set you back years on a climb... how difficult it is to climb Everest (they had monsoons, avalanches, etc.)
How'd the Nintendo DS withstand the high altitudes?
We totally had so much electronic equipment, and I'd say the Nintendo DS held up the best of any of it...
We were using a CB radio to stay in touch and that would consistently go bad... then we'd bring it back to life...
It was because of the wind and the cold, we had a Dell computer that got fried, a Polytechnic screen that went out... we had three of the four MP3 players go bad....but the Nintendo DS units keep hanging in there...
And it was the Nintendo DS units that suffered the worst of it - they were constantly with us in our tents which were moist and cold... the were right there in our packs so they suffered a lot of wind blasts, they were dropped...
And the Sherpas would beat the (heck) out of them - they'd play with them in the kitchen where curry would get split on them, all these incredibly hot spices... and they kept on performing...
Believe me, if they went through the stuff that they went through (making the way up to Everest), I can guarantee a five-year-old can spill jelly on them and they'll still survive... (vs. PSP)
And we played a lot of Madden... Chris was often the winner of those battles...
