[Everest Ultimate Edition Download
Iberio Ralda
The Himalaya Everest Edition HW features a dial fashioned from a piece of rock collected just below the summit of Mount Everest. The dial is more than three times as thick as regular dial and contributes a significant amount to the weight of the watch. To offset this weight increase, the new Himalaya Everest Edition II has a case made from polished aerospace-grade titanium. (An 18K rose gold case is available on request.)
A normal dial has a thickness of between 0.2mm and 0.4mm. The Everest rock has a thickness of 1.0mm. In order to fit the substantially thicker piece of Everest rock onto the dial plate, Kobold subcontracted the operations of cutting, slicing, grinding and polishing the pieces of rock to a German firm specializing in this work.
The German experts faced challenges along the way but after almost two years, we finally held the first Everest dial in our hands. The result was amazing and our customers agreed - the first run of 25 automatic-winding Himalaya Everest Edition watches sold out in a short amount of time.
In 2021, Kobold began developing the Himalaya Everest Edition II. The new watch is powered by a hand wound Swiss-made Unitas 6497 caliber that has been modified to include a central seconds hand and to accommodate the unique thickness of the dial with the Everest summit rock.
The Back Story
In 2009 and 2010, Kobold-founder Michael Kobold reached the summit of Mount Everest and collected a number of rocks a few yards below the summit, on the Nepal side of the mountain. Initially, these rocks were intended as gifts for friends and family. After returning from the expedition, a Nepali goldsmith fashioned a ring featuring a small piece of the summit rock, which Michael presented to his future wife and fellow Everest summiteer, Anita. It was then that the idea was born to turn some of the rocks into watch dials.
The first run of Himalaya Everest Edition watches was limited to 25 pieces, which sold out soon after Kobold opened its flagship store in Kathmandu. This edition, however, had a design problem. The dial was too thick to accommodate even the highest hand height available on a Swiss movement (height #4), causing the hour hand to touch the dial. The result was that most of the first edition watches failed in the field.
Despite this recurring problem, some of the original Himalaya Everest watches have sold for substantially more than the $16,500 list price. In 2012 at a watch auction in London, one of these unique watches changed owners for GBP 25,000.
The new Himalaya Everest Edition II has overcome the teething problems of the earlier edition. By substantially increasing the hand height of the movement, the "HimEvII" has adequate clearance between the dial and the hands and is therefore not only a ruggedly beautiful showpiece, but a reliable and accurate timekeeper as well.
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Kobold is back! When Kobold was founded in 1998, everyone told us it would fail. We proved all the critics wrong and in the process blazed the trail for the renaissance of American watchmaking. What followed between 2013-2018 were years of internal sabotage by now-former employees. Today, a new team is ensuring that every customer is 100% satisfied. We've taken the steps necessary to rebuild our company and now our customer service team is happy to answer your questions and address your concerns.
For 98% of all Everest climbers, the choice of routes comes down between the Northeast (Tibet) and Southeast (Nepal) Ridges. For almost everyone, all other routes are too dangerous, too difficult, and not commercially guided. This post will examine the various routes and explore the most popular commercial ones.
Nepal issued a record 478 climbing permits to foreigners. Add in one and a half Sherpa supporting each foreigner; over 1,200 people pursued the summit last spring. Fears were rampant of a 2019 repeat with long lines and deaths. The lines never developed, thanks in part to colder weather that sent a higher number of climbers home in mid-season, many with a persistent virus. However, the deaths did develop, but not because of the record permits or climate change.
What stole the headlines were the daily reports of rescues, frostbite, missing climbers, and deaths. The root cause of the chaos remains elusive and, in some cases, covered up. Some blame the record permit numbers, inexperienced clients, and low-cost operators. However, Nepal government officials cited climate change. Blaming climate change is a red herring to abdicate responsibility by operators and authorities. Again, in my estimation, 11 of the 18 deaths were preventable.
70-year-old French alpinist Marc Batard twice, in 2021 and 2022, attempted to establish a route to bypass the Khumbu Icefall by climbing on the flanks of Nuptse. Nuptse serves as the southern wall above the Icefall. The Benegas Brothers advocated for this for many years but could never make it a reality because of objective dangers and the climbing difficulty. He returned in 2022 to test his new route and to set an age record for a no-Os summit but accomplished neither.
It is difficult to analyze the routes because they are often named after their geological feature, the national team, or even the person who first climbed them. But in, general, there are about 20 climbing routes identified on Mt. Everest.
There are three faces on Everest: the Southwest Face from Nepal, the East Face, aka Kangshung Face, from Tibet, and the North Face, also from Tibet. Of these, the Kangshung Face has seen the fewest attempts and even fewer summits.
There are many, many variations on the non-standard routes. For example, climbing the standard Northeast Ridge to the summit and returning via the Great Couloir or the North Face. The Southwest Face is also popular; this variation includes the Bonington Route but also climbing via the Rib.
While the vast majority of climbers on the north side take the Northeast Ridge route, they are joining the ridge in the middle. The first ascent of the true Northeast ridge was in 1995 by a Japanese team. They start at roads and end at 5,150 meters. One section of that route is called the Pinnacles and is extremely technical and difficult. It took them three days and fixed 1,250 meters of rope to navigate through this section.
The illustrations are courtesy of National Geographic (Martin Gamache, Jaime Hritsik, Chiqui Esteban, Ng Staff Sources: 3D Reality Maps; The American Alpine Journal; The Himalayan Database; Ed Webster; East Face Imagery Courtesy Of Digital Globe @ 2012; Raphael Slawinski). National Geographic had a great piece about a proposed new route in 2015, which had an excellent article and animations but has since taken it down..
Mt. Everest was first summited by Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmond Hillary with a British expedition in 1953. They used the South Col route. At that time, the route had only been attempted twice by Swiss teams in the spring and autumn of 1952. They reached 8500m well above the South Col. Of note, Norgay was with the Swiss, thus giving him the experience he used on the British expedition. The Swiss returned in 1956 to make the second summit of Everest.
This is a typical south-side climb schedule showing the average time and the distance from the previous camp, plus a brief description of each section. More details can be found on the South Col route page.
A Chinese team made the first summit from Tibet on May 25, 1960. Nawang Gombu (Tibetan) and Chinese Chu Yin-Hau and Wang Fu-zhou, who is said to have climbed the Second Step in his sock feet, claimed the honor. In 1975, on a successful summit expedition, the Chinese installed the ladder on the Second Step.
The north side started to attract more climbers in the mid-1990s and today is almost as popular as the Southside when the Chinese allow permits. In 2008 and 2009, obtaining a permit was difficult, thus preventing many expeditions from attempting any route from Tibet. And it was closed to foreigners from 2020 through 2023 because of COVID and bureaucratic delays.
As this chart shows, using the standard routes accounts for 73% of the deaths, with the Southeast Ridge dominating all deaths at 150 or 49%. This number is heavily driven by the 2014 ice serac release off the West Shoulder of Everest onto the Khumbu Icefall, taking 17 lives, and when 14 people were killed at Basecamp in 2015 after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake caused an avalanche off the Pumori-Lintgren ridgeline. Whether these were one-time events or ongoing concerns has yet to be determined. Therefore, climbers must make their own decisions as to the safer standard route.
Analyzing these death statistics more closely shows that on both sides, descending from the summit is significantly more deadly for members, with 46 deaths compared to ascending, with 12 on the Nepal side and 43 descending with six ascending on the Tibet side.
Summits
The Nepal side is more popular, with 8,350 summits compared to 3,646 summits from the Tibet side. Only 1.9% or 224 climbers summited without supplemental oxygen. Only 35 climbers have traversed from one side to the other. Member summit success stands at 39%, with 5,899 who attempted to summit, making it out of 14,496 who tried. About 62% of all expeditions put at least one member on the summit. Few climbers from both Nepal and Tibet have summited, only 668. And even fewer, 155, have summited more than once in a single season. Almost only Sherpas, 78, have summited within seven days of their first summit that season. Kami Rita Sherpa (Thami) holds the record for most summits at 29 and Kenton Cool, UK, at 17 for a non-Sherpa. Seven Sherpa have 20 or more summits. Member climbers from the USA have the most country member summits at 906.
By now, you can see the non-standard routes are the domain of the elite and highly skilled alpinists, and even with their talent, the death rates soar. On the standard routes, the south has the Khumbu Icefall, and the north has the Steps and weather. However, these numbers clearly show the south has a larger death rate.
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