All-female Everest team thwarted

Associated Press

TACOMA — The five Americans who hoped to become the first all-female team to climb Mount Everest were forced to turn back just short of the summit.

Health problems and weather forced them to turn around early Saturday Nepal time, just 285 feet from the summit. Another summit attempt was considered unlikely.

Minutes before they turned back, expedition leader Eric Simonson of Ashford-based International Mountain Guides had reported things were fine, said his wife, Erin Simonson, business manager for the trek.

"Everything was going beautifully," she told The News Tribune of Tacoma. "Twenty minutes later, I’m getting this distress call."

Midge Cross, a 58-year-old grandmother from Mazama, was part of the team. But the breast-cancer survivor had turned back Friday and was not among the four women — Alison Levine, Kim Clark, Lynn Prebble and Jody Thompson — who made the final summit push.

The goal was to plant a flag on the peak of the 29,035-foot mountain.

Weather near the summit had been calm most of the day, but rapidly deteriorated as the team proceeded beyond the 28,710-foot South Summit.

They ran into problems about 6:40 a.m. Nepal time, when former heart patient Levine, of San Francisco, collapsed from exhaustion and the effects of altitude, Erin Simonson said. Guide Dave Hahn attempted to revive her, but finally determined he and two climbers from the Sherpa support team should assist her in descending the peak.

Then guide Lisa Rust developed vision problems in her right eye, and she, too, descended with another Sherpa climber.

That left three climbers from Colorado — Clark, Prebble and Thompson — along with guide Ben Clark, five Sherpas and expedition photographer Jake Norton.

They started along a thin ridge of snow leading to the base of a steep pitch called the Hillary Step.

Then Clark radioed that Thompson was having trouble.

"It’s a knife-edge and often corniced kind of razor you have to walk across," Erin Simonson said.

At the same time, the weather began turning, with clouds forming and the wind increasing.

So the last three women headed down.

Cross, who would have been the oldest woman to summit Everest, turned back Friday at about 24,000 feet. She had complained earlier in the week of fatigue related to heat-induced asthma and other diabetes-related health problems.

"I didn’t want to be a burden on the team, so I thought it would be better if I turn around here, rather than 1,000 or 2,000 feet higher," Cross said in an interview posted on www.discovery.com, the Discovery Channel Web site carrying dispatches from the team.

Meanwhile, in happier news from the Himalayas, Phil and Susan Ershler of Bellevue, who scaled Mount Everest early Thursday to become the first couple to climb the highest peaks on each of the world’s seven continents, arrived safely at base camp Saturday, said publicist Dan McConnell.

Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Everest in 1953, about 1,100 people — including about a dozen American women — have reached the 29,035-foot summit. More than 170 have died trying.