Everest 2022 – The Irish Update

Everest 2022 – The Irish Climbers

The 2022 Everest season is well underway and all Irish climbers appear to be in Nepal and on the march. In total there are 6 Irish climbers on the mountain this season (5 from RoI and 1 from NI) all climbing on the Nepal (South) side because the Tibet side being closed because of ongoing Covid-19 restrictions in China. In numeric terms, this is very much ‘back to normal’ for Everest in terms of numbers of Irish attempting the climb. All climbers are currently in different stages of adaptation and preparation, as they slowly meander through the valley to their respective base camps via different routes, climbing peaks along the way, in order to arrive adapted to around 6000m by mid April, ahead of their first rotation up the high mountain a week or so thereafter.

The 6 Irish climbers attempting Everest this season are:

– Robert Smith from Tyrone  (with Madison Mountaineering)
– Miko Keane from Galway  (with Ascent Himalayas)
– James McManus from Tipperary  (with Nepal Pyramids via Seven Summit Treks)
– Diarmuid Morrissey from Athlone  (with Furtenbach Adventures)
– Jonathan Duke Ruane from Sligo  (with Arnold Coster via Seven Summit Treks)
– Michéal Brogan from Tyrone via Mullingar  (with Summit Climb – Dan Mazur)

Everest has seen 10,656 successful ascents by more than 6000 climbers since the first ascent by Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953. From an Irish perspective, Everest has been climbed 71 times by 55 Irish climbers (9 women, 46 men) since the first Irish ascent by Dawson Stelfox in 1993, with a total of 135 Irish attempts to climb the mountain over the years. Full details on all of the Irish summits and attempts can be found here.

Robert Kelso Smith (51) is a professional mountain guide, originally from County Tyrone who now lives in Fort William in Scotland. Robert has previously climbed Everest an astonishing 6 times, with last summit in May 2021 while guiding for Madison Mountaineering. He has the unique distinction of having climbed K2 and Everest in the same season in 2018 and climbing Everest and Lhotse within the same 24 hour period in 2019. Robert has climbed five of the fourteen 8000m peaks (Everest, K2, Manaslu, Cho Oyu and Lhotse) – the most of any Irish climber and has significant climbing and guiding experience including 8000m peaks, Snow Leopards and extensive Antarctic climbing and polar expeditions to name but a few. Robert has recently completed a trio of climbs in Antarctica, including Vinson Massif (4892m), Mount Tyree (4852m) and Mount Shinn (4661m) within the same week. This is likely a first ascent for an Irish climber on Tyree and Shinn, and the first time anyone has climbed all three of these Antarctic peaks in the same season since the 1966/67 season. Robert is guiding with the US-based Madison Mountaineering expedition team this season.

Michael ‘Miko’ Keane (69) is a sheep farmer from Corr na Móna in the beautiful Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) region in County Galway. In 2018 he became only the 4th Irish climber ever to reach the summit of Manaslu (8,156m), having successfully climbed Denali in 2016 and reached the summits of Elbrus, Kilimanjaro and Mont Blanc prior to that. A keen outdoor adventure runner and mountaineering enthusiast in his native Galway, Miko is a regular on the adventure race circuit, including Gaelforce and the Maamturks Challenges, among others. Miko is climbing with the Ascent Himalayas expedition team (Nepali owned and operated) where Mingma Tsiri Sherpa and his experienced team will be taking great care of him, having established strong ties with a number of Irish climbers over the past decade. This is Miko’s second attempt on Everest after he decided to end his 2019 expedition prior to the team advancing to Camp 1 on their first rotation. Miko is one of the most humble and down to earth guy you will ever meet and we hope it is second time lucky for him this year. At 69 years of age, a successful summit would also make Miko the oldest Irish person to successfully climb Everest.

James McManus (39) is originally from Roscrea in Tipperary, now living and working in Dublin. James is the first Tipperary native to attempt Everest and is planning to climb without supplementary oxygen. If successful, he would be the first Irish climber to achieve a feat which has only been done 216 times by 181 climbers in the past (see full list at base of page). James runs the Dublin-based adventure travel company Earths Edge, founded in 2007 and specialising in treks to various peaks including Kilimanjaro, Elbrus and Aconcagua. James has a degree in Sports Science and has been involved in the outdoors since an early age. He represented Ireland as a kayaker in 1999 and has climbed a number of peaks including Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Aconcagua, Peak Lenin and Muztagh Ata. In a recent podcast, James stated that he is climbing with a single Sherpa guide Tsering Lama from Nepal Pyramids, throughout (guide will be using bottled oxygen) rather than as part of a larger commercial expedition team. Curiously, he will not be based at Everest Base Camp throughout the climb, but will instead base himself lower in the valley in Pheriche at 4300m. His adaptation trek to the base of the mountain is via the Ren Lo and Cho La Passes and include climbing Lobuche East. This is a reasonably familiar route for teams adapting on Everest each season and helps ensure that you arrive at the base camp physically ready for the rigor of scaling the icefall to Camp 1 on the first rotation up the high mountain. This route is familiar to me because our team took that Three Passes route coupled with a climb of Island Peak during our 2015 Everest expedition and climbed Lobuche during our 2014 Everest expedition adaptation phase.

Diarmuid Morrissey (56) is a Dublin-born Athlone native. The father of four boys currently lives in Portugal. Diarmuid has climbed Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Aconcagua (for a second time just a couple of months ago), Kosciuszko, Vinson Massif, Island Peak and Mera Peak and is attempting to complete the 7 Summits with Everest hopefully his 6th peak in that adventure. Diarmuid is climbing with the Furtenbach Adventures expedition team. This is Diarmuid’s second attempt on Everest having been on the mountain last year with the US-based Mountain Trip expedition team, during what became a rather shambolic ‘Covid season’ on Everest. As the season wore on, the Mountain Trip team lost half of their Sherpa group to Covid-19 and became unable to support the team fully with a reduced headcount and the added complexity of Cyclone Yaas bearing down on them as the summit window narrowed to a close. The expedition was eventually cancelled on 22nd May 2021, just ahead of their planned summit push. I interviewed Diarmuid in April 2021 ahead of last years expedition – Read here.

Jonathan Duke Ruane (42) is a native of Sligo, a Fulbright scholar and former Sloan Fellow at MIT. He is currently a lecturer at MIT, in the Global Economics and Management group and is a member of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. He is also an adjunct professor at Trinity College Dublin. He was previously CEO and co-founder of VC backed SAAS start-up Eventovate which he and his brother subsequently sold in 2016. He was previously named in the Top 40 Irish Entrepreneurs Under 40 and is an experienced ultra-distance marathon runner including Marathon des Sables. And just to combat any accusations of him being a slacker, Jonathan has recently been appointed to the board of RTE (Irelands national broadcaster). If all of that wasn’t impressive enough, last September Jonathan became only the 10th Irish climber to successfully climb Manaslu (8163m) – the 8th highest mountain on earth. He also has a bunch of other peaks and some rather impressive climbing under his belt, from the Southern Alps to Peak Lenin. Jonathan is the first Sligo native to attempt Everest (we have to assume Westlife’s ‘You raise me up so I can stand on mountains’ is on continuous loop on his playlist), and is climbing within the Arnold Coster expedition team which operates as a team within a team inside the Seven Summits Treks (SST) infrastructure on the mountain.

Michéal Brogan is climbing with the Dan Mazur owned Summit Climb expedition team which consists of 15 clients with geographic split as follows… Ireland (1), USA (7), UK (3), Germany (2), Japan (1), Canada (1). Micheal is originally from Tyrone but has been living in Mullingar for some years now. Micheal and the Summit Climb team had a heck of a time trying to get from Kathmandu to Lukla, due to the bad weather which has hampered air traffic and delayed many teams thus far. As of today the entire team is finally on the trail.

The focus for now will be on gaining valuable adaptation and reaching their base camps healthy, dialed and ready for that crucial first ‘rotation’ from their base camp to Camp 1 and back again in a couple of weeks from now, taking that infamous journey through the ever-changing and unpredictable icefall. We will bring you any notable updates as the 6 Irish climbers progress.

Everest – “No Os” Summits

This season sees the first Irish attempt to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen, so lets dive into the data to see who has done this before. Of the 10,656 successful summits of Everest to date, only 216 of those climbs by 181 climbers from 39 different countries were achieved without supplementary oxygen. The first to achieve this immense feat was Reinhold Messner in 1978.

🇳🇵 Nepal: 62
🇮🇹 Italy: 20
🇺🇸 USA: 13
🇷🇺 Russia: 13
🇦🇹 Austria: 9
🇨🇿 Czechia: 8
🇫🇷 France: 8
🇪🇸 Spain: 8
🇪🇨 Ecuador: 7
🇮🇳 India: 7
🇯🇵 Japan: 6
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan: 5
🇬🇧 UK: 5
🇦🇺 Australia: 4
🇨🇳 China: 4
🇩🇪 Germany: 4
🇨🇭 Switzerland: 4
🇧🇬 Bulgaria: 3
🇺🇦 Ukraine: 3
🇦🇷 Argentina: 2
🇮🇷 Iran: 2
🇳🇱 Netherlands: 2
🇰🇷 S Korea: 2
🇧🇩 Bangladesh: 1
🇧🇷 Brazil: 1
🇨🇦 Canada: 1
🇨🇱 Chile: 1
🇨🇴 Colombia: 1
🇩🇰 Denmark: 1
🇫🇮 Finland: 1
🇲🇽 Mexico: 1
🇳🇿 New Zealand: 1
🇵🇪 Peru: 1
🇵🇱 Poland: 1
🇵🇹 Portugal: 1
🇷🇴 Romania: 1
🇸🇰 Slovakia: 1
🇸🇮 Slovenia: 1
🇸🇪 Sweden: 1