Natalya Belyankina was flown from Everest Base Camp to Kathmandu after a Khumbu cough she could not shake. Andrei Vasiliev, Serguey Kondrashkin and Vitaly Shipilov went back up the West Ridge the same day for a foray of about a week. They are climbing without supplemental oxygen and without a support team, on a route that has seen only three ascents.
Natalya Belyankina left Everest Base Camp by helicopter for Kathmandu after a bad case of Khumbu cough made it impossible for her to go back up. The three men she came to climb with started up the West Ridge the same day. Andrei Vasiliev, Serguey Kondrashkin and Vitaly Shipilov are now the entire team, and their next foray is planned to last about a week.
Vasiliev, who leads the expedition, called it a real pity. He wrote that Belyankina had done a great deal to make the expedition happen, and that it was impossible for her to continue in that condition. The report of the evacuation and the team's plans comes from Explorersweb.
A dry, racking cough at altitude is common enough to have the Khumbu valley's name attached to it. It is also a reason people go down, and going down with one is the right call rather than a failure of nerve. Our short notes on altitude illness and when to descend are in the FAQ.
What they found on the first foray
The team's first venture took them to the Lho La, the col between the Khumbu glacier and the Tibetan side, and onto the first part of the ridge above it. Kondrashkin described the approach as passing below enormous hanging seracs. They judged it reasonably safe on the way up because they saw no avalanche debris underneath. That impression changed after they pitched their tent on the col and heard a serac collapse below them in the night.
The next morning they went at the ridge itself. Kondrashkin described a sharp ascent: a snow slope of about 50 degrees first, then more than 100 metres of glacial ice at around 60 degrees. Above that they climbed over a slight cornice and came out on the ridge proper.
Shipilov and Vasiliev carried on up a rocky outcrop from there. They were looking for two things at once, a workable line and somewhere flat enough to put a camp, and they photographed the ground above for study later. Kondrashkin and Belyankina watched from below. He wrote afterwards that the upper half of the mountain looked as vast from there as it does from the very foot of it.
They went back down to Base Camp the following day. The useful result was a better approach, one that spends less time underneath the hanging ice.
No oxygen, no support, no fixed line
The plan is to climb the West Ridge in light style, with no supplemental oxygen and no support team above Base Camp. The exact line is not settled. That is not disorganization; the route has no trade path, and the decision of where to go gets made on the ridge with photographs taken three days earlier.
They are reported to be the only climbers on an 8,000m26,247 ft peak at the moment. That alone tells you how far outside the normal calendar this attempt sits. Almost every ascent of Everest happens on the South Col route or the north ridge, in a short window, with fixed rope and bottled oxygen. Our Everest guide covers those two routes, which is what a reader planning the 7 summits will actually climb.
We think attempts like this one are worth following closely, and worth describing accurately while they are still in progress. Nothing has been climbed yet. Three people are a week into a rest cycle and going back up a ridge that very few parties have ever committed to.
A route with three ascents
The West Ridge has been climbed three times, each by a different variation. Two broad options exist for anyone starting from the Nepal side.
The first is the long way: stay on the ridge from the Lho La all the way up, as the Yugoslavian team did in 1979. That team was Andrej Stremfelj, Nejc Zaplotnik, Stipe Bozic, Stane Belak-Srauf and Ang Phu Sherpa. It is one of the longest lines on the mountain.
The second is to cross into Tibet partway and finish up the North Face by the Hornbein Couloir. That retraces the 1963 route of Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, who went up the normal route as far as Camp 2, joined the West Ridge, and crossed to the couloir that now carries Hornbein's name.
Both of those expeditions were large, heavily supplied national efforts, and both are remembered as much for what they cost as for what they achieved. The party now on the ridge is three people carrying their own loads. The comparison is not meant to flatter anyone. It is simply the measure of what is being attempted.
What there is to watch
For the next week the useful questions are modest ones. Whether they find a campsite high enough on the ridge to be worth the carry. Whether the new approach keeps them clear of the seracs. Whether the weather lets three people without oxygen stay out long enough to make progress on a line this long.
Everest in this style has very little in common with the guided ascents that appear in most 7 summits records, and nothing at all in common with the logistics a first-time 8,000m26,247 ft climber should be arranging. Anyone comparing operators and support levels for a normal-route attempt will find the practical ground covered on our operators page.
Belyankina is in Kathmandu. The expedition she helped put together is still on the mountain, which is roughly the outcome she would have wanted when she got in the helicopter.
This story is part of This week on the 7 summits: 19–25 October 2026, the week's news in brief.