Assignment task:
Between 27 March and 10 June 2006, a group of 12 from Turkey organized an expedition to the highest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest. The Turkish Team planned to climb via the Northeast Ridge route which required an ascent from the Tibetan/Chinese side. The expedition held several targets, such as accomplishing:
• The first team ascent from Turkey to be named as a national expedition
• The first woman ascent to the highest point in the world from Turkey
• The first ascent from Turkey to be made without the help of supplemental oxygen.
The Turkish Everest Team was comprised of 11 high altitude mountaineers (10 climbers, one base and advanced base camp manager) coming from the same climbing community affiliated with Middle East Technical University (MET) in Ankara and one specialist for visual documentation.? The expedition was led by Serhan Poçan, who held several "first ascents" records amongst the climbers of Turkey. Petrol Ofisi, a Turkish petroleum company, was the main sponsor for the expedition.
The Turkish expedition received logistics and sherpa support from Arun expeditions, an agent located at the Nepalese side of the mountain. After weeks of preparations, approach and acclimatisation, on 15 May four members of the climbing team, including one-woman climber, reached the summit of Mt. Everest. With these ascents, the expedition had accomplished two of its three main targets.
On the same day, during the final summit push, one of the members fainted at over 8500 meters of altitude and had to climb down to the ABC (advanced base camp) escorted by two other climbers and the sherpas. Three other team members (of whom two women) also suffered health issues and retreated a day earlier. On that day, Poçan had problems maintaining the coordination and communication within the team. He and the other two members who were climbing without supplemental oxygen had to withdraw from the "unmasked" trial. After a break of one day, Poçan announced that the team would have another trial with the rest of the climbers who had not reached the summit, including the ones who were having health issues. This was a bold decision, since there were issues like the sherpa team refusing to continue the climb, giving religious reasons as an excuse; the weakened health of the team members; having lost two of their close friends from other expeditions in the past two days; and the limited time left for the "good weather window" of the mountain. Despite all, the expedition resumed, and on 24 May, just before the weather was about to turn bad, all the remaining six climbers of the Turkish Team reached the summit of Mt. Everest and returned to the ABC safely. The 2006 Turkish Expedition led by Serhan Poçan was recorded as being The First National Team from Turkey (10 submitters in one expedition), and also leading the first woman ascent(s) (all four women climbers of the team) to the highest point of the world.
Based on the summery above answer following questions in detail: How would you define the main achievement of the 2006 Turkish Expedition to Everest? Is it a success story or were they just lucky?