Author: Grant ‘Axe’ Rawlinson

This morning at 9:30AM New Zealand time, I did a live Radio Interview with Radio New Zealand’s ‘From nine to noon’ show with presenter Kathryn Ryan.  The subject was ‘Are to many inexperienced climbers attempting Mt Everest’. The interview lasted 9 minutes – you can hear a recording of it here. http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/remote-player?id=2520976 I better get…

Well the hard work climbing Everest has finished, but my work to raise money for the Taranaki Rescue Helicopter Trust has just begun. For those of you who have only started reading my blog in the last two months you may not be aware of the connection between my climb and the Taranaki Rescue Helicopter…

Hi all! I am happy to report I am back in the beautiful and relaxing Courtyard hotel in Kathmandu.  The hotel owners, Pujan and Michelle cooked us a beautiful steak dinner last night in a welcome back party.  After chewing on Yak steaks for the last 50 days, having an air flown Australian steak, my…

Hello all. I am very happy to report I am sitting comfortably in basecamp at 5200m, enjoying the luxuries of thicker oxygen, a hot shower coming up this afternoon (no need to rush into these things), and I even indulged in a beer or three last night with our Sherpa crew. I downloaded my emails…

There’s no news from Grant since his last SMS and phone call from ABC – must be the beer! His last call to Steph said he’d be coming down to basecamp today; and might be home as early as next Wed! In any case, I have been conferring with Suze Kelly from Adventure Consultants, possibly…

Got a call from Grant from ABC. he bombed down the route in ultra fast time on Sunday, and by lunchtime was relaxing with a beer. He sounded very relaxed, and contented. The main objective dangers are past, as it’s just a long hike back to basecamp on a well-trodden route. What remains to be…

( via SMS messages to David Lim) From Grant: It was decided to spend the night at C3 as the group needed to re-group after the summit climb. Some very tired people are coming down, It was freezing cold last night- like being in a freezer (  David’s note:  The average household freezer is about…

( by SMS to David Lim ) SMS just in from Grant… 13 hours to the summit and back to C3. Little rest here, and then I will probably head down to North Col this afternoon. I’m the first one back so not sure about the others behind me yet. But i saw all of…

A quick check in the records ( valid up to 2009) show that unless there have been more Kiwi’s on the top since then, Grant would be the 31st. And if not, he would easil be in the first 40 Kiwis to have done the feat, joining such illustrious climbs like Edmund and Peter Hillary,…

(from David thru G) ” Just climbed Everest! The phone packed up at the summit; so I could not make a call from the top. EVeryone is safe. It’s been about 2 hours since my descent. I’ll will check in with another report later” FROM DAVE: Well done buddy!  You know that the job to…

Hi Folks ( david here) – there’s a frustrating lack of reports from the north – mostly because most teams arent was well equipped on the communications side as those on the south. I know that a couple from Adventure Consultants just summitted – so the winds cant be that bad. As I write this…

No Updates from Grant – a good sign I think. If he had turned back in the early hours of the morning, we might have heard from him already – so fingers crossed. For those who asked, Uelie Steck, the “Swiss Machine” summitted on May 18 with the Chilean team. He was climbing without bottled…