Adjacent to Mount Everest, Lhotse is the world’s fourth-highest mountain. In May of 2024, Tim Howell of the Jöttnar Pro Team aimed for a new world record: the highest ever wingsuit BASE jump, launched from Lhotse’s summit ridge at 8,100 metres.
If the goal is easy to achieve, is it worth setting in the first place? If you know the outcome is inevitable, is it still a challenge? Last year I was invited to dinner overlooking a frozen Finnish lake and asked, “What is your dream goal?” To me a dream is something that sits slightly out of reach. Something that will take the stars to align. It may take more than one shot, but it's worth trying again and again. What I learnt from my expedition to Lhotse this summer is that the jump of my life might not come as easily as I thought.
“I often write about risk and failure but the whole expedition was more than that.”
After six weeks in the Khumbu valley and an unsuccessful attempt to open up the world’s highest wingsuit BASE jump, I was on a helicopter heading back to Kathmandu. I had never fought so hard for a goal in my life. It would be the jump of all jumps and unlikely ever to be beaten due to the topographical variables needed to perform a wingsuit flight. The whole expedition was about dreaming as big as I can, and learning the ways of high altitude mountaineering and everything that comes with it, including the commercialisation, ethics and the drive to spend so much time and effort on a single objective.
My altitude jumping record stood at 6,000 metres and although I had no problems acclimatising, I definitely felt the thin air. I would be using oxygen on Lhotse. The focus for me was the jump, not the climb, and I wanted everything in place to give me the best chances of success: a strong climbing sherpa team, a lead guide with plenty of high altitude experience and bottled oxygen.
My wife and I flew into Lukla and ascended from town to town acclimatizing as we went — Namche, Chuckung, Dingboche, base camp of Island Peak. My progression in the mountains has come from years of building up skills and experience. It’s been the same with wingsuiting. One project leading to the next - bigger and more complicated. Only now do I feel like I’m ready to play in the big mountains. I always want to be able to rely on myself, first, in the mountains rather than the people around me.
On a ridgeline on Makalu 15 kilometres away was a friend, also trying to find a high altitude exit. He was skilled in the mountains and in a wingsuit, but I felt concern that his three years of wingsuiting experience hadn’t given him the experience needed to make the right decisions. As it turned out, the weather was unforgiving on Makalu too and he ended up not jumping. But later, sadly, he impacted on a mountainside in India on another jump.
I didn’t know what to expect from the Khumbu Icefall apart from the clichés: a glacial maze of crevasses and seracs, blocks of ice as big as cars stacked up like Jenga pieces. It would be an interesting place to sit awhile and observe, if it wasn’t for the dangers of sitting still for too long amongst ever-moving glacial terrain.
As we gained altitude I felt an air of anxiety about how secluded and cut off we were. No helicopter is coming for rescue; people barely have enough energy to help themselves, let alone others. The tents are cut into ledges on a 45-degree slope that rolls all the way down to Camp 2, 2,000 metres below. I ran out of oxygen 200 metres away from Camp 4. One man who had greeted us in the queue never made it out of his tent the following morning, despite resuscitation attempts. It was the reality of life at high altitude.
At 3am we left the tent at Camp 4, untethered from the mountain, forging a new route traversing to the gully that would lead to the planned exit point on the ridge. Shidi led the way, fixing the ropes. The sky was blue, with barely any wind. It seemed as though everything was lining up. As I neared the ridge and my proposed launch point, now only 100 metres away, the doubt was replaced with a certainty that nothing could stand in the way. The objective was as good as done; I was going to get the jump. Until I straddled the knife-edge ridge, that is.
A world of difference lay on the other side. A nightmare world of swollen, swirling clouds and spindrift – a complete contrast to the sunny stillness from which I’d just emerged. It was un-jumpable, of that there was no question. So with oxygen dwindling and unable to afford any kind of waiting game, near broken by exhaustion and emotional turmoil, we made the only viable decision: it was time to turn around and head home.
Although disappointing, at no point did I feel out of my depth. I’ll continue to pursue this project until it’s accomplished. It’s a lifelong goal and not a flight of fancy, so I'll prepare for the next attempt with all the lessons I learnt from the first one. Maybe that additional 1% will make the difference next year. And so back to where I began: uncertain, non-inevitable and slightly out of reach. My kind of challenge.
Tim Howell is a member of the Jöttnar Pro Team.
