Thursday 20th May, 11pm

New tragedy on Everest

After being without any news of the Belgian expedition for two days, Alain Hubert finally contacted HQ this evening to bring dreadful news: the Belgian, Pascal Debrouwer is dead. Joao Garcia, his companion, is still miraculously alive.
Of course, Hubert was in no mood to recount the story of these two fateful days - Wednesday 19th and Thursday 20th May - as he still did not have all of the details to reconstruct them accurately. Which is why we asked him to give us his version of what happened. He promised that he would write to us in the next few hours.
In the meantime, this is what he told us down a crackling telephone line. The two men - Pascal and Joao - were caught by a storm at an altitude of around 8 300 metres, just after they had conquered the great giant; contrary to what we stated on Tuesday, while Joao Garcia did not use oxygen, Pascal switched on his tank a few hours before the summit. The two men were very tired. At around 11 pm, Tuesday 18th May, so just twelve hours after their success, they left the small shelter where they had taken refuge - in fact, it was the tent that Luc Fontyn had placed there himself at 8 300 metres (see release of Tuesday 18th May, 11 am) - and started to descend. As is usual in these sorts of circumstances, each man goes at his own pace, and as they had no torch (we will find out why in a few hours' time, possibly it was in a bag that they left behind on their way up, but could not find again on the way down), the two men were not always in view of one another - Garcia was going much faster than Pascal. As they were descending by night and it was particularly dark, it would appear that the two men lost one another.
If Joao was rescued, it was because other climbers - Brazilians or Italians, we're not sure which yet - saw him, staggering along the ridge at around 7 200m. He had sheltered in a crevice to wait for his companion, and because he did not see him arrive, he was starting back up again to look for him. Hubert told us that the climbers, who has set out to rescue the Poles, saw someone slip on the rockface: according to Alain, it was Pascal who fell more than 1 000 metres to his death. Whatever happened, Alain Hubert - who had just been in radio contact with Joao - had to use all his powers of persuasion to convince the Portuguese climber (who was already in a bad state, it seems, and was babbling incoherently) not to set out again to look for his companion and to give up immediately. "We would have had another dead climber," stated Alain. "But for a moment, I really thought he wasn't listening to me and was going to set out again. It would have been absolutely crazy … "
Yesterday midday, Joao Garcia came back down to the ABC; his life is not in danger but he is suffering from serious second-degree frostbite on his hands, feet and nose. As for what happens next, we cannot yet say; Alain has told us that he intends to try and see how and where Pascal fell, and that he will now take care of clearing all of the camps set up on the ridge by the expedition. Naturally we did not talk about a possible third attempt by him. More news tomorrow, without doubt.

Thursday 20th May, 5pm

No news from the ABC
Communication with Everest is becoming increasingly difficult : the telephone used by the Belgian expedition is playing up, as they say (a problem with the temperature of the aerial, according to, the supplier) and most of the expeditions currently at the Tibetan base camp are beginning to pack up to leave; which naturally reduces the chances of making contact with HQ in Brussels. This is why we have no news yet about the descent of the two conquerors of Everest. We also have no news of the three Polish climbers who reached the summit an hours before Debrouwer and Garcia.