Hi Mom. Guess what? I've got cerebral edema and I'm freezing to death. How's Dad?
That's right. The summit of Mt. Everest is about to be enveloped in a comforting shroud of cell coverage. So you can take the sat phone off your shopping list. That should knock a thousand bucks off the 50k [...]

Scaling Mt. Everest 16 times and breaking a speed record just wasn't enough. Pemba Dorje and his two brothers now not only want to scale it again, they also want to stay on the summit for 24 hours before heading down. That's nutso, but good luck to ya!
From the AP:
Between the three of them, the [...]

Tahoe-based extreme skier, Shane McConkey, died yesterday after
launching off of a cliff during a ski-BASE attempt. My condolences to
Shane's friends and family. Via ESPN's Freeskiing:
Decorated big mountain skier and BASE jumper Shane McConkey was killed
earlier today in a ski-BASE accident in the Italian Dolomites.
A member of the Red Bull Air Force and pioneer of the [...]

Here's a great piece from the NY Times on the nude hiking craze that has hit the Swiss Alps. We're so lame here in the US. Think I'm gonna start climbing and skiing in the nude in my usual Sierra haunts. For that, I'm truly sorry.
 
*Photo Credit Christoph Bangert for The New York Times
From [...]

Dutch climber Wilco van Rooijen is resting in a Pakistan hospital after narrow escape from K2. His descriptions of the events offer a sobering account of the tragedy.  From NY Times:
After the avalanche severed the climbers’ lines across a part of the mountain called the bottleneck, Mr. van Rooijen spent the night with Gerard McDonnell, [...]

So Sad. From NY Times:
At least nine climbers were reported dead on Sunday on K-2, the
world’s second highest mountain, after an avalanche struck them on a
steep gully at a height of nearly 27,000 feet, just below the summit.

Those who perished included
South Koreans and Nepalese, the Pakistani television station ARY
reported. Serbian, Norwegian, Dutch and French [...]

This has got to be one of the worst climbing accident news reports I’ve ever read. I can’t imagine how this poor woman is feeling. My condolences. One question though: how is it that the woman was un-roped, but her husband and three children were roped up?
From BBC News:

A 50-year-old woman has witnessed her [...]