Washington: Everest Climber Joby Ogwyn, who was about to take the big leap from the summit, has revealed that the deadly avalanche which claimed 16 lives “looked like a big white dragon”.
Ogwyn was laying in his tent at Base Camp in the early morning hours of April 18, the snow-and-ice capped peak of Mount Everest looming overhead, when he heard it – the familiar “creaking and groaning” sound of nearby glaciers cracking apart. But something about the noise made the 39-year-old adventurer sit up, poke his head out the back of his tent and what he saw horrified him.
Ogywn said that within a couple of seconds it looked like this big white dragon, thunderously loud, moving at probably 200 miles an hour, straight towards their Sherpas, who were carrying some of their equipment up to a higher camp. The avalanche, which sent blocks of ice the size of houses rocketing down the mountain’s slope, ended up killing 16 Sherpas – three of whom had been hired for Ogwyn’s project – in what would become the most deadly day in the mountain’s history.
Ogwyn said he was shell-shocked by the incident and soon realised that his dream of leaping off the summit and gliding 11,000 feet back down to down to Base Camp would be scrapped.
Instead, he grabbed his ice axe, ropes and crampons and headed up toward the avalanche with expedition leader Garrett Madison, who spent the next two days digging through the ice, retrieving bodies.
(With ANI inputs)