Billi Bierling – Journalist and Climber

This is just a short note to let say that I am back in Kathmandu and I don’t think I have ever come back from the mountains so quickly. After having come down from Camp II on 27 May in the morning, I just had a shower, wrote the newsletter for Himalayan Experience, which you [...]

Hello, this is Billi’s robot. Good news. Just received another sms from Basecamp, or ‘BC’ in the local language. In it Billi says “Can u do me a huge favor and just put on my website that I summitted on 26th May at 5am and Billi will eloborate more soon. Ah first German woman on [...]

This is Billi’s robot in Kathmandu. Information just arrived from basecamp by text message that Billi summitted and is now on the way back down to camp II. And the weather is lovely! Thus more directly, live from Billi very soon!

Apologies for the silence over the past week but I have been away from modern technology and have been unable to send any updates to my website. I have just come down from four days at Camp II and Camp III and enjoyed the dizzying heights of 6,400m and 7,300m.  The Lhotse team left base [...]

This is Billi’s robot! Just received a message from Billi in her sleeping bag saying that she is heading up to camp two (2 / ii ) for three (3 / iii) days. She is “acclimatising on the mountain” which is surely the best place to do it. More news as it comes. Robot.

It is the 5th of May and while many teams are going down to the lower elevations to recover from having lived above 5,000m and prepare for their summit attempt, the Himalayan Experience Lhotse group is heading down the valley in order to climb Lobuche East for acclimatisation. It seems late in the season to [...]

Greetings from my little acclimatisation hike with my friend and mountain mentor Ellen from Vale!The rest of the Lhotse group is still on their way down from the 5,455m peak and Ellen and I are happy to be sitting in the lodge as it is snowing hard outside now!  Just heard that Osama bin Laden [...]

This is just a quick update on what has been happening here at Everest base camp. Our Everest group has gone off to Camp II and Camp III for the next six days, and the Himalayan Experience camp is very quiet with only Monica, Ellen, Russell, a team of Sherpas and I left. I am [...]

I am just sitting in the legendary White Pod – the igloo-like structure that dominates the Himalayan Experience base camp – and the thought of moving over to the prayer flags from where I have a good enough 3G connection to send this update for my website is already exhausting me. But despite all the [...]

I’m on my third day in the Everest region and I reached Russell’s Lobuche camp at 4,900m on Wednesday morning. I’m feeling good despite the fact that I steamed up the khumbu in less than three days. I met a few friends on the way and arriving here was a nice reunion with guides, Manaslu [...]

After having wrapped up my job with the United Nations in Islamabad and said goodbye to the lovely people I met there as well as our CORE community, I am back in Kathmandu getting ready for Lhotse. I left Pakistan with a laughing and a crying eye but it was time for me to go. [...]

I have just come back to Islamabad after having spent a week in Kathmandu, where I was busy meeting mountaineering expeditions for Miss Hawley and starting writing the Newsletter for Himalayan Experience, who I will be climbing Lhotse with. It was good to be back and it was exciting to see all the usual suspects [...]

I have just noticed that time must have been flying over the past three months and even though it seems that I have only just got back to Pakistan after my visit to Europe, I am actually about to leave again. I have just been asked how I was feeling and even though the time [...]

It has been six months since the floods in Pakistan caused huge devastation, left more than 1,000 people dead, killed around 500,000 animals, destroyed more than 2.2 million hectares of crops and affected almost 18 million people. I happened to be here when the water started to spread across the country and it was shocking [...]

„I have written some poetry for you,“ Mohammad Zai Parishan proudly told me when I finally found him at the local hospital at Surkhab Refugee Village in Balochistan, where he had been for a regular check-up. “I knew you would be coming back.” About six weeks ago, I visited the 21-year-old man, who is suffering [...]

Last weekend was another weekend filled with sporting activities and first of all I would like to share with you that my good friend and Ironman World Champion, Chrissie Wellington, has yet broken another world record. Chrissie stunned the sports world again by finishing the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and the 26.2-mile run in [...]

Quite a lot has happened since I posted my last newsletter, in which I wrote about my amazing encounter with Mohammad Zai, the wheelchair-bound man I met in Pishin near Quetta. Following the article I posted on the UNHCR website, I received an email from a university in Toronto offering to collect some money to [...]

My work in Pakistan has taken me to Quetta in Balochistan, which is in the south west of the country and is very close to the borders with Afghanistan and Iran. I came here more than one week ago and even though the city is surrounded by beautiful looking mountains, I am not allowed to [...]

Life after Manaslu has been reasonably hectic with barely three days gap between the summit and getting back to Kathmandu. Russell managed to organise a couple of helicopters that took us straight from Samagoan (the last village before base camp) o to Kathmandu, where I immediately got on my bike to find expeditions for Miss [...]

I am sitting in the sun at base camp watching the hard-working Sherpas clearing up the camp and packing everything away. It has been almost six weeks now that I left Pakistan and after all the waiting and acclimatising the expedition is finally over and we managed to ‘knock the bastard off’ as Edmund Hillary [...]

Forty hours in a tent We have just come back down from spending four nights higher up on the mountain. On Monday we set off towards Camp I, where we were going to spend one night before we were supposed to move to Camp II at 6,270m. However, due to the fact that the ropes [...]

Well, I thought the waiting game on Mount Everest was a huge challenge, but little did I know what climbing Manaslu in the  post-monsoon season entailed. Here, we are not only waiting for the winds to drop on the summit while we are basking in the sunshine. Here, we are mainly bound to our tents [...]

On Friday morning we went climbing and it was great! For the first time in two weeks we got closer to the mountain, wore crampons and a harness and were actually using our ice axes – and it just felt right. We have been at Manaslu base camp for four days now and slowly but [...]

I am sitting in my tent with the rain pounding on my roof and the downpour seems relentless and never-ending. I had heard a lot about the bad weather on Manaslu, however, I did not expect it to be that bad. On Tuesday, it poured down heavily all day and even though we had a [...]

This is just a brief note from Manaslu base camp, where we have just arrived after having spent a few days at Samagoan, the last village before base camp. Monica, our doctor, Lacchu, our chef, Phurba Tashi, the Sirdar, and I had a fabulous five days walking and considering that we were still in the [...]

Hello, Namaste and Grüß Gott, This is not Billi, but her robot. Just updating the site to re-mention that Billi is writing on the Himex blog and the first two posts can be found here: 1. http://www.himex.com/english/news/2010-08-26Manaslu.htm and the most recent here: 2. http://www.himex.com/english/news/2010-09-05Manaslu.htm Enjoy reading!

This is just a quick note to let you know that I have arrived back in Nepal and am busy packing my bags, interviewing a few expeditions for Miss Hawley and just getting used to my very different life here again. Monica, our expedition doctor, Lakchu, our amazing chef and I will take the bus [...]

I don’t think I have to say any more about the floods in Pakistan as I am sure you are all seeing daily pictures of these devastating waters that have submerged one fifth of Pakistan’s land – and it does not seem to be over yet. While I am writing this, sitting in my dry [...]

Most of you will have heard that Pakistan has been hit by severe floods following torrential rains that fell over one week ago, and the extent of these raging waters engulfing the country is still not quite clear. Here in Islamabad, the situation is ok but I remember that last Thursday I could not take [...]