First published in IOD Hertfordshire Summer 2003
Info
IQ and Virtual Showcase, two Hertfordshire based companies,
provided the technical base camp for this year’s boldest,
but unsuccessful venture on Everest - the creation of a
new route to the summit of the world’s highest mountain
via the north-east face, a wall 12,000 feet high, a mile wide,
and completely virgin territory.
Climbers Cathy O’Dowd and Ian Woodall were already veterans of Everest, having reached the summit twice, this time they took the public with them. Despite huge difficulties and the failure of the expedition they managed to send email and pictures back to Info IQ and Virtual Showcase, who formatted them and then sent them on to the expedition’s two main media outlets.
When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay finally reached the
summit of Mount Everest on 29 May 1953, it took four days
for the news to reach England, sent first by runner and then
by cable. And then all that got through was a few words to
say the peak had been conquered. But while the mountain is
as high, and as cold, and as steep as it was 50 years ago,
the way news travels has changed completely. Everest was climbed
before the first satellite was shot
into orbit. In the last year it has become possible to phone
home from the summit of Everest using a satellite handset
little bigger than a mobile phone. Add a laptop and email
and pictures are possible too. Power for the satellite phone,
the laptop and the digital cameras came from a small kerosene
generator, and a supply of spare batteries.
All the electronic equipment worked at the limits of its
capacity in terms of cold. The cost of the telephone call
can rise as high as US$ 9 a minute, so sitting on-hold waiting
for help-line
assistance was not an option. But like all technology, the
theory is a lot simpler than the reality. This is where the
St. Albans technical base camp came in.
The
challenge the climbers faced was huge. Their chances of success
far lower than those teams that climb on the well-established
routes on Everest. However, in their attempt they have relived
the early pioneering spirit that brought Britons to the foot
of Everest from the 1920s onwards, a few climbers deep in
the wilderness, hoping for a chance to conquer the unknown
with the story of what happened shared by all of the UK and
Ireland.
Click here to read the full case study.
