On April 25 of this year, a massive earthquake rocked Nepal, killing over 8,500 people. The quake had a magnitude of 7.8 and was so powerful, according to various news media, that it physically shifted the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, by 1.5 inches. A second quake, registering 7.5 on the Richter scale, struck in May, killing dozens more.
Below, researcher Ulyana Nadia Horodyskyj, who holds a Ph.D. in geological sciences, recounts her journey to the volatile region a year earlier.
Collecting snow samples on Lobuche East (20,150 feet) – a training climb in December 2013.
April 18, 2014, started off like any other day in the Himalaya. As my team from the American Climber Science Program and I packed our bags at a village around 14,000 feet and continued our trek to meet up with the rest of our support crew at Everest Base Camp, there was excitement in the air. Our journey to the top of the world, to reach new heights in science, was beginning.
But, unbeknownst to us, a tragedy was unfolding at over 18,000 feet. Earlier that morning, while groups of Sherpas, Nepalis and Westerners were on their way to a higher camp on Everest, a large ice serac (a block of glacial ice) collapsed, causing an avalanche of snow and ice that buried 16 climbers. This occurred in the Icefall, the gateway to the upper reaches of the mountain. At 10 feet per day of motion, this is an active and dangerous area, yet climbers often have to make multiple passes through here, while transporting gear and acclimatizing to the thinner air.
Ulyana Horodyskyj with the Ukrainian flag, high on Himlung, central Nepal.
Prior to this expedition, I had already spent eight months in Nepal as a Fulbright scholar conducting research on glacial lake expansion, growth and flooding potential. I also dabbled in snow analysis at high altitudes to determine amounts of pollution (black carbon/soot) and dust present in snowpack on glaciers. This is important to quantify, as dark particles falling on white snow can lead to enhanced melting of that snow as the particles absorb more solar radiation. Our expedition on Everest was to continue this important work, but at much higher altitudes.
While most of my work was constrained to below 22,000 feet from October 2013 to February 2014, the question remained: how did glaciers fare higher up, in the “death zone,” where the air is incredibly thin above 25,000 feet? To answer this, we were going to take a systematic sampling approach at different altitudes, as we climbed higher and higher up the mountain. At an advanced base camp (Camp 2), we would set up a weather station, to track real-time conditions (air temperature, humidity, snow reflectivity) during our climb.
Sadly, we could not accomplish any of our goals. The magnitude of the tragedy was great and left everyone in camp shell-shocked – to this day, I still have a hard time dealing with it. We lost one of our team members, Asman Tamang, a young climber going through the Icefall for the first time. As tensions over better treatment and payment rose between the Sherpas and the Nepali government, it was no longer a safe place to be, despite our best intentions to do science and conservation work towards a greater understanding of how the mountains and their glaciers are responding due to climate change.
After trekking 30 miles and flying back to Kathmandu, we regrouped and made a decision to try for another peak, Himlung, in central Nepal. It would provide us with another data point from a different location in Nepal. Himlung is nearly 23,400 feet and rests on the border between Nepal and Tibet. The peak does not see much traffic. One of our team members, David Byrne, in fact, was part of the first American team to climb it. This was only in 2008. Thus, the peak would provide us with a nice contrast to Everest, which sees very heavy traffic. This year, over 800 people were slated to climb it from the Nepalese side.
After riding for over 16 hours in vans and jeeps, and then trekking in for 25 miles, we finally arrived at the base of the mountain. Given limited time (the monsoon season was approaching) and lack of funds (no refunds of climbing permit fees or deposits were provided from Everest), we had to haul our gear relatively quickly to the higher altitude camps, without Sherpa support above base camp, as they did not have insurance and we had no money for the premiums. Sometimes this meant 40-50 pound load carries. For me, as the only woman on the team and the smallest, at 110 pounds, this proved very difficult. Progress was slowed down even further when a few of us contracted food poisoning.
The Khumbu Icefall, site of the April 2014 avalanche tragedy and gateway to the upper reaches of Mount Everest.
Eventually, we established a Camp 1 and Camp 2, and we were on track to set up one more camp before our summit push. Samples were collected at the various altitudes along the way. While my rope-mate Jake St. Pierre and I went down to base camp to rest and retrieve another tent and some more fuel for our highest camp, Dr. John All, the expedition leader, stayed higher at Camp 2, to also rest and perhaps collect a few more samples. Early in the morning of May 20, Jake and I were slowly making our way to Camp 2 when a helicopter came up the valley and hovered nearby. It was a terrifying moment, given what we had recently experienced on Everest when helicopters were transporting bodies from the Icefall to an improvised morgue near our tents. Immediately, I thought the worst had happened and it brought me to a standstill as I watched the helicopter make its way higher up, until it landed at our Camp 2.
We later found out that, the previous day, John had fallen into a crevasse about 70 feet down but managed to climb out despite multiple broken bones. He made his way to the tent, where he called for help using a satellite phone. That accident spelled the end of our expedition but fortunately not the end of John’s life. (He continued his recovery back in the States, where he underwent several surgeries.) Given the large amount of gear still up at Camp 2 and the slushy snow conditions where the snow was darkening day-by-day, it was treacherous getting up and down safely to retrieve everything, but somehow we managed to finish this difficult task.
Sitting at home now in Colorado, I am far removed from the events that transpired just a few months ago. But the memories are still fresh. The grief lingers. During the course of my Fulbright year, I trekked nearly 1,000 miles through central and eastern Nepal, collecting data and training locals through my Sherpa-Scientist Initiative. I learned many hard lessons in the mountains – even having my own brush with death earlier in the year, when I tipped a kayak and fell into freezing cold water in a fast-flowing glacial river.
The Himalaya are an unforgiving place, but also a place where I manage to find a quantum of solace amongst the chaos and hardships of modern life. Perhaps that is why I keep returning.
Ulyana Nadia Horodyskyj recently earned a Ph.D. in geological sciences (focused on glaciology) at the University of Colorado Boulder. In her dissertation titled “Contributing Factors to Ice Mass Loss on Himalayan Debris-Covered Glaciers,” she investigated growth of glacial lakes, as well as impacts of pollution and dust on snow melt. She lived in Nepal for 10 months as a Fulbright scholar from August 2013 to June 2014. Prior to this, she had already made three research trips to the Himalaya. In the summer of 2013, she volunteered for the American Climber Science Program in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru, learning about snow collection techniques for black carbon (soot) analyses that she later applied in Nepal.