Expedition Team

Russell Brice
Expedition Leader (New Zealand)

VIDEO -- Russell discusses the risks he will face during the 2007 season.

Russell Brice leads expeditions for his company, Himalayan Experience, and has 25 years of experience on Everest. An uncompromising leader, he oversees every aspect of his expeditions.

Brice was brought to tears on Day 1 of last year's expedition when he learned of the death of one of his Sherpa team. This will be his 18th year on Everest and no one knows the mountain's risks better than Brice. "Eighty percent of my friends are dead," he says.

Controversy surrounds the "King of the Mountain," never more than after 2006, the second deadliest season on record. To add to the tension, in the 2007 season Russell has opted not to organize the fixed ropes to the summit. But if he doesn't do it, who will?

This may be Russell's last year on Everest – he's sick and tired of his fight with the mountain. The pressure is immense when you feel you're sending climbers into hell just to drag them out again and gambling with their lives.

Russell has a surprise for his climbers this year – a cozy lounge at Base Camp, complete with rugs, couches and other luxuries.

Rod Baber
Climber (United Kingdom)

VIDEO -- Rod co-leads a tour of Base Camp.

VIDEO -- Rod kills time by trying to stuff Darius into a Barrel.

Rod Baber, 36, earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for ascending the 47 European summits in the shortest time, beating the old world record by four and a half years. Inspiration for "The Highest Challenge" struck him in November 1995, while Baber was on course for a financial career and was climbing in his time off. One night, relaxing in a bar with friends, he was asked which mountain he would climb next. "All of them," he said, through a tequila haze. And thus the course of his life changed forever.

"I want to be the first person to climb to the highest point in every country in the world," says Baber. "I've already climbed to the highest point in every country in Europe, so it was a natural progression to want to climb to the highest point on all the other continents."

In between summits, Baber now runs a climbing center in the west of England, where he and his colleagues teach anyone from corporate business teams to young offenders how to deal with heights and fear, instilling interpersonal skills in their charges along the way.

Rod portrays himself as an accidental mountaineer, someone who just fell into it. He's also quite a party animal but says he's calmed down a bit since he had children. He's planning to make the first ever cell phone call from Everest's summit. It will be to Sacha, his 3-year-old daughter, who hates climbing, loves her dad, and has only just learned to say the word "Everest."

Greg Child
Writer and Photographer (Australia)

BLOG -- Read Greg's coverage of the 2007 climbing season.

Greg Child was raised on rock climbing. During his 30-year career, he has conquered some of the highest peaks in the world, including Mount Everest and K2, the world’s second highest peak. He is also an accomplished big wall climber and has established several first ascents on well-known walls such as Yosemite's El Capitan.

Greg is considered an especially literate mountaineering storyteller. His book Postcards From the Ledge took home the Banff Mountain Festival Book Award in 1997. He also won an Emmy for his video Hitting the Wall in 1998. He is a regular contributor to magazines such as Outside, Backpacker and National Geographic Adventure, and writes a regular column in Climbing.

Greg is a member of the North Face climbing team and has recently taken up exploratory mountaineering, which has led him to remote jungles in northwest India and Comb Ridge. A native Australian, Greg is now a resident of Utah.

Betsy Huelskamp
Climber (United States)

VIDEO -- Betsy gives her perspective on life at Base Camp.

Betsy Huelskamp is an L.A. journalist who interviewed Tim after his attempt in 2006, and was inspired to give it a go herself. She believes Everest is the most difficult challenge a person could take on, physically, mentally and spiritually. But Betsy's motto has always been, "If you are not living life on the edge, you are missing the view!"

Most comfortable on her rusted, chopped out old Harley, Betsy has been featured in motorcycle documentaries and writes for numerous biking magazines. She's an ice climber, trekker, bungee jumper, diver, Kung Fu black belt, and has worked much of her adult life as a personal trainer. At 46 she feels she's in great shape. "This is the opportunity of a lifetime, one I've trained for my entire life."

Betsy believes her "mental and spiritual strength supersede my physical abilities, allowing me to go fearlessly forward," and that her "daring, nomadic spirit is an example to women and men all over the world." She hopes Everest will be the ultimate inspiration. "As I attempt the summit of Everest, I will be happy knowing not only what I am accomplishing for myself, but the hope that I will be instilling in the millions of women just like me all across the world. It's an enormous, overwhelming challenge and my only strategy is to take it one step at a time."

Mogens Jensen
Climber (Denmark)

VIDEO -- Meet the Dane with asthma who is determined to summit without supplemental oxygen.

Mogens (pronounced like "bones") Jensen is a former elite athlete and Iron Man competitor. As a chronic asthma sufferer, he is determined to summit Everest without supplemental oxygen. Mogens is a schoolteacher turned professional mountaineer from Denmark — a country with no mountains.

Asthmatic Mogens Jensen will attempt to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen for the fourth time this year. Last year, on entering the Death Zone, Mogens was hit by altitude sickness. He was so dizzy and nauseous he was afraid he would not be able to negotiate the climb down. A month later he tried again and failed for the fourth time. “I think there must have been a small cerebral thing, too," he says. "I had blurry vision and was off balance for almost two weeks after coming home."

On arriving home, Mogens also discovered that his fiancée had left him. But he’s back and determined this will be his year. Is he dangerously obsessed? Russell wants him to abandon his ambition to climb without oxygen and is growing increasingly frustrated with him. Mogens plans to go faster and lighter and ahead of the main pack on the mountain.

Mogens weekly training includes biking 300 - 400 miles (500-600 km), running 60 miles (100 km), lifting weights and walking with a 150-pound backpack.

Tim Medvetz
Climber (United States)

VIDEO -- Meet the biker bad boy who's climbing with a metal cage around his spine.

"Big Tim" surprised everyone last year by making it to Camp 4 at 27,720 feet (8,400 meters). As well as having a completely unsuitable build for high-altitude mountaineering, the L.A. biker has a metal cage around his spine, metal plates in his head, and his left leg is held together with pins and rods.

On Summit Day last year he fell victim to summit fever and refused to turn back when ordered by expedition leader Russell Brice. Climbing too slowly and running low on oxygen, Russell believes if Tim had continued to the summit he would have died, but Tim maintains he could have done it. This year he's back. Not only the biggest man on the mountain, he's probably Russell's biggest liability.

Monica Piris Chavarri
Team Doctor (United Kingdom)

VIDEO -- Meet the doctor who rarely sees the inside of a hospital.

Expedition doctor Monica Piris Chavarri spends her summers rock climbing in the Spanish Pyrenees, her winters skiing and ice climbing, and in between earns the money to fund her hobbies by working as a doctor in English emergency rooms. Born in Oxford to Spanish parents, she is truly bilingual.

In 2006, at the age of 31, she completed a diploma in mountain medicine. Her trip to Everest is the next step in her ambition to become a high-altitude specialist.

She plans to follow Russell to the North Col, where she can best monitor the team's health. "There's no reason for me to go to the summit," she says. "What use would I be if I was hypoxic? My responsibility is to make sure everyone remains fit and well."

Sherpa Phurba Tashi
Sirdar (Nepal)

VIDEO -- Meet Russell's "Super Sherpa."

Phurba is Russell's most experienced Sherpa and his lead guide or "Sirdar." He has summited Everest an incredible 10 times. He is Russell's eyes, ears, arms and legs on the mountain. Incredibly strong, even at high altitude, he is entrusted absolutely with the climbers' safety.

Last year, Phurba was on the spot to deal with Tim and Gerard's near mutiny on Summit Day. His calm in the face of an extremely difficult situation was clearly conveyed via the Sherpa Cam he wore on his helmet.

This year, Phurba will be attempting the double traverse with David Tait, an Everest first that will be undertaken as a partnership, reminiscent of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's historic triumph. Phurba is doing it at the suggestion and encouragement of Russell, who wants Phurba to get the recognition he deserves as an outstanding mountaineer.

David Tait
Climber (United Kingdom)

VIDEO -- David discusses his double traverse attempt.

David is planning a world first -- a "double traverse" of Everest with Sherpa Phurba Tashi. In a nutshell, this means summiting from the north or Tibetan side, then descending down to ABC on the south or Nepalese side. Then, subject to weather and general health, they plan to retrace their steps all the way back to Tibet, summiting yet again en route. Nobody has ever attempted such a feat before.

In 2004, Tait failed to summit -- his body just couldn't cope with the extreme altitude. But a year later he successfully summited with Russell Brice. His climbing buddy, Brett Merrell, went through the same disappointment David had the year before. David could relate to his buddy's failure and offered to pay for Brett to try again as seen on the first season of Everest: Beyond the Limit.

David's generosity stretches beyond other climbers. A millionaire fund manager he is on the board of the NSPCC (National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children), and his adventure should bring the organization a lot of money. In 2005, he raised £200,000 for the charity. He hopes to raise at least that amount again this year. His motivation is that he was abused as a child.

Darius Vaiciulis
Climber (Lithuania)

VIDEO -- Darius co-leads a tour of Base Camp.

VIDEO -- Darius kills time at Base Camp by testing the limits of a gear barrel.

A cell phone dealer from Kaunas, Lithuania, who works across Eastern Europe, Darius climbed Cho Oyu three years ago with Russell Brice. When he summitted he says he felt proud to be "higher than birds fly and taking almost no breath like a fish."

He claims not to actually like the process of climbing – just the reward afterward. But he believes that climbing Everest will be more of a mental than a physical challenge.

Darius is married with two children, ages 11 and 3. His family is worried about his latest adventure, but supportive. "I tell them it is my dream – I have to go."

Ed Wardle
High-Altitude Director and Cameraman (Scotland)

DIARY -- Read Ed's 2006 diary.

This is Ed Wardle's second season as a crew member for Everest: Beyond the Limit. In 2006 he was stationed at Camp 4 as a cameraman. He wrote a harrowing account of the chaos that ensued during the 2006 Everest season for Discovery.com.

This year Wardle made his first Everest summit while filming the second installment of Everest: Beyond the Limit.

Katsusuke Yanagisawa
Climber (Japan)

VIDEO -- Meet the oldest man to ever attempt to summit Everest.

Katsusuke Yanagisawa (known in camp as Yanagi) is a 71-year-old retired junior high school teacher from central Japan.

He's making his summit attempt with a group of Japanase climbers led by their own guide, Hiro, the only one in the group who speaks English. A successful attempt would make Yanagisawa the oldest person in the world to summit Everest.

Fred Ziel
Climber (United States)

Fred is a physician and family man from South Pasadena, Calif., where he runs the local Diabetes Care Program. His passion for climbing and mountaineering dates back more than 30 years, and he's completed successful ascents on both rock and ice throughout North America and Asia. He maintains a fine balance between career, family and hobby.

"My quality climbing time has evolved from lots of weekend rock climbing trips and occasional ice climbing sessions into more widely spaced visits to Alaska and the Himalayas," he says. "Now, at this point in my life, it's in many ways easier to go on an expedition than complete a weekly trip to the crags."

Ziel summited Everest from the south side in 2003. It was a long, drawn-out affair, which included an earlier aborted summit attempt due to high winds around the Balcony. When faced with such a stumbling block, many climbers would have lacked the tenacity to try for the summit a second time. And having spent months shuttling equipment up the southern side of the mountain, acclimatizing to the high altitude and suffering from combined wind and snow blindness a few yards from the summit, you might question why Fred would want to return to the mountain again. In 2005, he attempted the North Face, but had to turn back when he developed pneumonia at 27,390 feet (8,300 meters).

For him, however, the choice is simple. "My personal mind-set is that Everest North is an entirely different mountain from Everest South."