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Saray Khumalo received the heartbreaking confirmation on Friday that her dream of becoming the first black African woman to reach the peak of Mount Everest was in tatters for a second year.
Nepal’s authorities declared the mountain open, but climbers had to hire helicopters to ferry them higher up the mountain to Camp 2 after the earthquake partly collapsed the normal route. An avalanche last year prematurely ended Khumalo’s previous expedition.
On Friday morning, Khumalo was still hoping she’d be able to climb. The dozen or so other South African climbers on Everest had been evacuated from the mountain earlier this week.
“I have peace in my mind about the decision. I have started packing up my equipment,” Khumalo told City Press from Everest Base Camp.
“Earlier, there was the option to send for the helicopters. It would have been very expensive, but cheaper than planning another expedition from scratch.
“By Friday afternoon, our group made the difficult decision not to hire the helicopters. It would have taken them out of circulation when they were needed for emergency relief work.”
Khumalo explained how she and a sherpa were busy climbing a glacier last Saturday between camps 1 and 2 when the mountain began to shake. They scurried down, but one of the ladders they needed to climb over the cracks in the ice fell into a fissure. They had to climb higher, and snow began to fall.
“We got lost in the poor visibility conditions, but we later found our way to Camp 2. By the time we finally reached safety, we were pretty shaky,” she said.
Khumalo, a married mother of two teenagers in Johannesburg, now wants to help with the ongoing relief effort.
