- Rescue
- Impact
Inside a record rescue season in the Khumbu
Pemba Sherpa · Rescue Coordinator, Khumbu
8 min read
Our volunteer teams answered more calls above 5,000 metres this spring than in any season before. Here is what we learned from the people on the ground, and what it means for how we train, equip, and respond next year.
At 4:40 on a May morning, the radio at our Pheriche post crackled with a call from Camp II. A Nepali climbing guide had collapsed on the descent, disoriented and unable to stand. Within twenty minutes, two of our volunteer responders were moving up the Khumbu Icefall with oxygen, a vacuum mattress, and a satellite link to a doctor in Kathmandu.
That call was one of 118 our Khumbu teams answered between March and June, more than in any season since the foundation began. Most came from above 5,000 metres, where every hour of delay makes altitude illness harder to reverse.
Why the numbers rose
Part of the increase is simply more people on the mountain. But our incident logs point to something else: more calls are reaching us earlier. Guides trained in our first-response programme now recognise the early signs of HACE and HAPE and radio for help before a patient can no longer walk.
“Five years ago we were mostly carrying people down. This season, more often than not, we were walking down beside them.”
What we learned
- Early radio calls cut our average time-to-patient by 41 minutes compared with last season.
- Night rescues made up a third of all responses. Headlamp and heated-blanket stocks ran low twice.
- Porters and kitchen staff accounted for nearly half of the patients we treated, most of them uninsured.
- Satellite consultations with doctors in Kathmandu changed the treatment plan in one in five cases.
What happens next
Before the autumn season we will add a second staffed post at Lobuche, double our stock of portable hyperbaric chambers, and extend first-response training to kitchen and camp staff, not just guides. Every one of these steps is funded by supporters who gave during our spring appeal.
The guide who collapsed at Camp II is back at work this autumn. He now teaches the altitude-illness module on our Namche course.
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