Munday’s ready for new Everest bid
Climber confident of making it to summit
Bothwell climber Ricky Munday is confident of reaching the summit of Mount Everest at his second attempt in the coming weeks.
Munday is back on the highest mountain in the world just under a year after turning back at 7900 metres up the 8848m mountain.
His team, which has been reduced by one member, are currently making rotations in preparation for an expected summit bid early next month.
And Ricky is confident he will be able to use last year’s experiences to help with this attempt.
In a message to the Advertiser from Everest, he said: “It feels really good to be back and to have a baseline against which to measure myself.
“I feel comfortable this year and really happy with both acclimatisation rotations.
“We’re now waiting for a weather window for our summit attempt, with high winds forecast until May 14.
“Once the winds die down, the ropes need to be fixed from high camp to the summit by the Chinese team Sherpas before the other teams can follow them up.
“We have three Sherpas for two clients and plenty of oxygen, so I feel really confident we can make the summit. We now need to stay healthy!”
Last Thursday wasn’t quite as positive as Ricky found it hard-going to make progress. In a social media post titled ‘Embrace the Suffering’, Ricky explained how difficult a task it has been to get to various points on Everest.
He wrote: “Some days on Everest are real suffer-fests. Climbing the north col on the first rotation was hard, both mentally and physically. But today (Thursday) surpassed it.
“We moved up directly from base camp (5200m) to Advanced Base Camp (6400m) – a distance of 22km, with an altitude gain of 1.2km vertical.
“It was incredibly demanding on every level. The first three-quarters were strenuous, my legs felt like lead and my lungs felt like they were on fire.
“I stopped every 90 minutes to eat and drink but I stopped far more frequently just to catch my breath.
“For long sections of the day I was alone, with no-one else ascending or descending. It was just me and the mountain track, placing one foot in front of the other, with every fibre screaming at me to stop or go down.
“It was exhausting, but I’m safe here in ABC and I’ve eaten some noodles, fried eggs and toast and yoghurt with honey. Tomorrow (Friday) is a rest day.”