Wilderness Challenge [Comprehensive British American American Entertainment]

At 1 o'clock in the morning, the Sherpas set off early.They need to set up ropes for climbers, inspect ladder bridges, evaluate ice towers, and then have to transport materials to their destinations—like other commercial mountaineering teams, "Wilderness Challenge" has prepared sufficient oxygen cylinders and medicines for the players and other supplies.At 3:30 in the morning, the huge team was divided into four teams and set off in the bitter cold wind.

In order to avoid "traffic jams", the program group managed the relationship and money in advance, coordinated the date, and finally decided to reach the summit on May 5. May is the most suitable time to climb Mount Everest. The weather in May this year is even better than in previous years, which also leads to more expedition teams crowded in the base camp than in previous years.A guide once pointed out that the climbers may encounter an unprecedented traffic jam, which will also bring unprecedented danger.In this environment, it is very rare for "Wild Challenge" to avoid most teams.

To go up from the base camp, you must pass the Kumbu Icefall, which is also called the "Horror Icefall" by some Chinese people.The Khumbu Icefall is the first of the four major passes on the southeast ridge route, and it is also the most dangerous pass. Nearly a quarter of the victims were buried here.Some of them were hit by falling ice towers, some stumbled and fell into ice crevasses, some disappeared at the edge of the glacier section, and some were buried by avalanches.

During the one-month adaptation training, Jennifer has set foot here five or six times, and none of them was frightened and heart-beating.When she stood at the foot of the icefall for the seventh time, in an instant, all the materials she had read elsewhere played in her mind in a loop——

The Kumbu Icefall originated from a glacier flowing down from a high mountain. The glacier flowed out from the source and fell rapidly, forming a nearly 5-kilometer-long icefall.Due to the characteristics of the glacier, the Khumbu Icefall moves about 1 meter every day, and the moving speed of each part is different, which also creates a terrain that is extremely prone to fracture and collapse.If the icefall is reduced to a water flow, then the ice towers are crests of waves, with hundreds of piles of crushed ice standing upright and slanting, some of which are only a few meters high, and some of which are tens or even hundreds of meters high.These ice towers will break from the middle of the root anytime and anywhere, and the whole body will collapse, or some ice chips blown off by the wind and ice cracked by the sun will fall from the top.

Every spring, a special force will break into the icefall to survey and determine the crossing route of the commercial expedition team. Every morning, there will be Sherpas from various teams to re-inspect and maintain the road. The minds of climbers are still notorious.

When the team walked up the icefall for the first time, a player from Russia couldn't help but swear. "You call that a fucking icicle?" Stuff? This is simply a federal building!"

The players all laughed.

Jennifer also laughed at the time, but she knew that laughter was just an expression of physical trembling and face protection, just like some people laugh out loud after experiencing extreme fear, no matter how dry, and some people accidentally fall from the stairs. When it falls down, it will suddenly jump up and say "I'm fine" in all directions.

It turns out she was right about how she felt.

The Khumbu Icefall is a lesson for all those who still hold Everest in contempt.

Three hours after departure, Soden, the leader at the end, quickly caught up with the middle of the team and patted Jennifer on the shoulder.Oddly enough, the night and headlights made his face clearly recognizable, and usually people can only identify him from the color of his mountaineering suit.Jennifer has long discovered that the men are not bad after covering their hair and growing beards and covering their faces with frost and snow, and the women are only a little short, and they can't tell who is who when they wear oxygen masks.

They nodded briefly at each other and patted each other on the shoulder as if it was some kind of common language. "Don't go too fast." Soden reminded routinely, "But don't go too slow, too slow will be unsafe." Jennifer nodded, she knew it well, and made up her mind to conserve her energy and stay vigilant as much as possible. Although the darkness makes the towering ice tower blurred and mediocre, it also increases the possibility of life-swallowing ice crevasses.

Before departure, Soden caged the four small teams in a place where it was easy to look after each other, and he was careful not to let them line up in the wrong queue, so as not to implicate each other.For many mountaineering enthusiasts, this is not a common signal. Usually, they will bundle up with their companions to protect each other and increase the fault tolerance rate.But Soden and everything that happened next told the players with practical actions: they can only rely on themselves on Mount Everest.

The team stopped before a wide ice crevasse.To cross the crevasse, competitors must walk across a metal ladder bridge overhead.

This is one of the highest areas in the world, surrounded by crumbling ice towers, and glaciers hundreds of feet deep at the bottom. Climbers can't ensure their balance by stepping on crampons and swaying ice axes, and rush from one end of the route to the other. The only way to pass at one end is a dangling metal ladder on the cliff. What's worse, these ladders are not particularly fixed, and the ice layer melts under the sun all the time. A fixed point stuck firmly in the ice and snow for one second may loosen in the next second.

Puba, the Sherpa guide, took the lead to pass the ladder bridge. He walked fast and well without too much shaking.Jennifer wondered if he realized that this high-level performance not only failed to reassure the members, but added a different psychological burden to them.

She pulled down the neckline slightly and took a deep breath, trying to absorb oxygen from the thin air.The uppers of the not-so-old hiking boots hurt her calves, which added another layer of worry to her. The cold is undoubtedly painful, but the cold can also paralyze some senses. It is conceivable to feel pain even in the snow and ice. What will it be like in the tent.She restrained herself from looking at or thinking about how deep the ice crevasse under the ladder was, and more importantly, that crevice had already been buried, and who might be buried in the future.

Fortunately, the first player who walked over also walked steadily, followed by the second, the third... all the way to No.16.Player Christopher, like Turner some time ago, was suffering from cough. According to the gossip of the players who lived with him, he often tossed and turned in the tent, crying because his cough rubbed his throat and sternum.The team doctors had nothing to do about it, they could only give him enough palliative medicine and painkillers, hoping that he could reach the summit smoothly.

No one expected the accident to come so quickly.

The people in the back of the line only heard a hoarse scream, and then the ice cubes and floating snow smashed into the cliff, making a knocking sound like bones and flesh.Christopher slipped from the ladder bridge and fell to the outside. At first, the safety buckle played a role, pulling him tightly on the rope at half a person's height, but people can predict the hidden dangers of human actions, but they can't predict the ice trap.The anchor point used to fix it on the south side became loose as the ice broke, and the entire ladder bridge first tilted, then fell downward, broke on the ice, and disappeared into the darkness in an instant.

It was daylight, and afterwards it was difficult for people to determine exactly how Christopher slipped and fell. Dolores, who was standing closest, described him as "losing his balance because of a violent cough, his hands left the safety rope to grab his chest, and he fell from the safety rope like a quick stone. He fell through the gap with the ladder bridge." Nandena added, "His crampons slipped on the metal ladder, poor Christopher, he is so weak, damn ice, damn ice!"

In any case, when the accident happened, all the contestants fell into a deathly silence. Jennifer, who reacted the fastest, and Soden, who had the most experience, almost simultaneously threw the contestants around them backwards to the ground. The ice sinks into the abyss.Several Sherpas pulled up the safety rope that had not had time to completely escape control within a thousandth of a second, but their efforts were in vain. Without a fixed anchor, the safety buckle and safety rope became a zipline.

The camera group flying in the air is moving towards the abyss under the control of the system. Its own light source and brand-new technology enable them to clearly capture the scene below, and the intelligent system also controls these pictures not to be disclosed to the audience—nor made public It's necessary.Any viewer standing in front of a TV, computer or mobile phone at six o'clock in the morning can see the electrocardiogram drawn in a straight line on the life detection system of the camera.They are used to losing players, even before the challenge was made public, they knew how many good mountaineers had fallen to the ground on Mount Everest, but such a sudden death was still unacceptable to them.

The contestants who were still fighting each other a few days ago were also awakened by this sap. They showed empathy, but no one dared to move on the loose ice. Some prayed to the sky, and some cried loudly. Others were shouting "Save him", "Save him", and the scene was chaotic.

Of all, Soden was the first to shake off the bewilderment.He signaled Pubba to take the players who had crossed the bridge along the established path to the top of the icefall, otherwise when the sun rises, there will be more uncertainties.After everyone continued to move forward either independently or being pushed, Soden and three other guides gathered the players who stayed on the south side, preparing to go around the ice crevasse and continue to move forward, leaving three Sherpas to try Rescue the silent Christopher under the ice crevasse.

There was no mention of turning back, no mention of waiting, delays or cancellations, either on the Icefall or at Base Camp.

Christopher's misfortune cast a shadow over the whole group, and what made people even more angry but powerless was that his death was just a symbol to Mount Everest, a name that was ticked off.Everyone will sincerely mourn for Christopher, but everyone will quickly immerse themselves in their own emotions: the Sherpas are more worried about the situation of the Khumbu Icefall this year, and the team leaders are more worried that the already compressed schedule will become unacceptable. Funders are even more worried that the camera crew hovering in the air will faithfully record this tragedy and it will affect the future mountaineering business.

Everything is so fast on Everest.

Pioneers spent an afternoon scouting new trails, laborers spent an early morning securing new ropes and ladders in place, and competitors spent hours reviewing notes—and that didn't even add up to the individual climbing teams Arguing for a fraction of the peak time period session.

In the early morning of the third day after the accident, more than five expeditions set off together.