'Spicy moment': German climber survives earthquake on Mount Everest

Bangkok Post Group

German climber Jost Kobusch witnessed avalanches and exploding glaciers while climbing Mount Everest, as a strong earthquake struck the foothills of the Himalayas near one of Tibet's holiest cities on Tuesday (January 7). - REUTERS

Transcript

00:00So this morning I was on Everest in my Camp 1 at 5,700 meters and well my tent was shaking

00:12pretty intensely. So I woke up, I looked out and I saw many avalanches coming down,

00:18seracs collapsing, big chunks of glacier like exploding and a pressure wave hitting my tent,

00:26doing some damage there and well it was a spicy moment. So when I descended there were some

00:35certain sections where I had to walk through that debris and those were the sections where

00:39I was definitely speeding up to reduce the amount of risk exposure that I had due to the time that I

00:46was spent there. I've been in earthquakes before on Everest in 2015. I experienced a very severe

00:52one here and I know there are aftershocks and it's just logical that there will be more stuff

00:58coming down with aftershocks. So it just felt right to go down, it just didn't make sense to

01:05go higher up. There was no fear, it was just a logical aha moment where I was just like

01:12this makes sense, let's go back to the base and let's observe, let's see what happens.

01:18I will definitely get some good rest right now. It's late already in Nepal and it's going to be

01:24nice to finally sleep in a building again, not in a tent and feel safe and I will take some time to

01:33observe the situation and make an informed decision on whether to go up or not.

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