In May 1999, Mountain Hardwear built a custom expedition tent for Babu Sherpa, who used it to camp on top of the world for an unprecented, and never repeated, 21 hours. This rare footage shows a few moments during his historic feat. Hard core!
He looks miserable. Do you think he got any sleep during those 21 hours? I doubt it.
Babu’s summit tent was designed by Martin Zemitis at Mountain Hardwear. It weighed less than 1.3kg.
Babu’s support team on the Nepalese side couldn’t reach him on the radio to check that everything was OK during the night he spent on the summit. It turned out that Babu had spent much of the time making surprise calls to friends climbing Everest from the Tibetan side.
Babu died on Everest in 2001 whilst attempting to reach the summit for the 11th time. He was a great character and is sorely missed. There’s an in-depth article about him on Outside’s website: http://tinyurl.com/babu-outside
Paul,
Thanks for this extra background. I was surprised from the video as to how large the summit of Everest is…
Amazing! This tent is actually right here in our Montreal office! We were (and are with his family still)partners for organizing treks and climbs in Nepal.
Rest in peace Babu!
FRED from Karavaniers