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Base
Camp - 12th May - 13:08 Nepali Time (reminder: our whole expedition
runs on Nepali time because the daylight hours work best for us (this
is true of most expeditions).
We've been in BC now for about 3 weeks and although this is supposed
to be the spot for R&R the cracks are beginning to show. Although
we're all pretty tolerant folk and we have a common objective in mind
we're all very different folk and have different ways and reactions
to pressure. Eventually, living in close quarters results in friction
developing around personal habits and traits and occassionally getting
on each others nerves. Some people worry about the mountain, our progress,
what's happening, what's the weather, what if this, what if that and
others just chill out. Fortunately, we are not short of space for people
to get away from it all. The patience game is part of climbing big mountains
and particularly this one, where we're only looking for a few clear
days in the whole 2 months of the expedition.
The wind damage described in the last dispatch has added to the mental
and emotional stress the team is wrestling with and we're still not
entirley clear what personal gear has been lost and won't know in detail
until we get back up to ABC. We do know that C1 (the North Col) suffered
less damage than reported but it is still feared that one of the tents
lost did contain half the team's high altitude gear. C2 was totally
destroyed and wiped off the face of the mountain with the loss of some
oxygen bottles from the cache at that level. They were swept off the
mountain and exploded as they hit the glacier 3000ft or more below along
with a shower of spare tents, sleeping bags, cooking sets, mats and
a bunch of tea bags and cuppa soups!
Russell and the Sherpa team have been on the case now for several days.
They rebuilt IBC en route to ABC. ABC is now in pretty good shape but
will get completed when the team gets up there. The Sherpas are now
working on the upper camps as I write. Although I hope we can continue
with the email dispatches from ABC its by no means certain yet and also
how reliable comms will be. We have intercamp VHF comms. back and radio
links with climbers but the satellite phones and laptops are a secondary
priority.
The climbing teams primary responsibility, at this time, is to recover
from the rigours of our time spent at ABC and the higher camps and get
ready for the push when the call comes with the break in the weather.
The last few weeks has been enough time to stop weight loss deterioration,
although no one is putting weight on. Most have lost around 10 to 15
pounds at least. Cracked lips and dry split finger ends, as a result
of the extreme conditions up high, are healing up and the wind burn
is calming down. The balancing act is resting and yet needing to keep
muscles in condition, but recognising that we are a bit like batteries
with finite power resource. If we burn power now, to keep in condition,
its not available later for "the push". But if we're not in
condition the push will fail.
For handling all these personal body management issues, it helps to
have a good working knowledge of the human body. In fact it's essential
to keep the fragile mechanism performing at its optimum in an environment
in which it was not designed to operate. Some in the team are better
than others with this self awareness and it shows in sickness, response,
apetite, etc. But sometimes we just forget about the stress the body
is under, particularly in the relaxed surroundings of BC. For example,
just this morning, whilst we were doing a team photo for the website,
after I'd been kneeling in front of the group for 3 or 4 minutes I stood
up slightly too quickly to move a camera. Almost instantaneously resulting
in hypoxia, total loss of vision and slumping back to the floor. Much
to the amusement of the team. Everything is operating at the margin.
Hydration is one of those body management issues which is important
in BC but a life issue up high. Working hard on the mountain for several
hours between camps would ideally need a litre of fluid every hour.
But we can only carry 2 litres. So we're dehyrated for much of the time
(melting and getting fluid into our bodies is a primary camp activity
on the hill and consumes hours and hours of tent time). A few % points
of dehyrdration will result in a 10 times multiple drop off in physical
performance.
Which brings me to pee bottles. All of us typically carry 3 one litre
bottles. 2 for drinking fluid and 1 for peeing (and you'd better not
make an indentifiication mistake in the middle of the night!). The average
adult has about a 450ml bladder and that means the pee bottle can deal
with two sessions in a night. This is not so important in BC but at
C1 and above there's no great desire to get geared up at 3 in the morning
and step out into what could be -30degs. Of course the other issue with
the pee bottle, up high, is you have to sleep with it since lugging
1 kilo of frozen urine up the hill is nobody's idea of load carrying.
Its a glorious day today with little wind in BC although one glance
north, up the valley, reminds us that the top of the mountain would
be inhospitable. Minus 40 to 50 deg.C and 45 to 50 knot winds are not
climber friendly conditions. Korbadu woke us as regular as clockwork
at 7am with sherpa tea. Its probably the one feature of camp life we'd
all like to take home. Some folk are taking the opportunity (grab em
when you can on this hill) of a windless, relatively warm day to wash
socks and underwear that are now 3 weeks plus old and complete with
attendant aromas. Others have decided that the key source of the pong
is themselves and so a stand up bath in a washing up bowl is called
for. Actually personal hygene is pretty important since sickness can
soon rip through the team. We have a fresh bucket of disinfected water
outside the mess tent everyday to keep grubby paws out of each others
food.
In the mess tent its almost inevitable that the main topic of conversation
is the mountain. But just recently Tony & Trynt mounted a drive
to enforce a cultural evening were the mountain was banned as a topic.
We put on some Vivaldi and talked about art, architecture and travelling.
Gernot (our resident physicist) set us some mathematical brain teasers.
But if its not the mountain we're talking about then its the weather.
We have access to US weather data consolidated and interpreted by a
Swiss meteo organisation and supplemented by data from the Met. office
in UK. Also we get sight of the Chinese military forecast from their
expedition. All of which shows a slight clearance in the high altitude
winds towards the end of the week, with a possible window opening shortly
there after. I cannot be specific about dates since we know that other
teams are trying to gain access to our knowledge and we know they check
our website. The Himex/Russell Brice reputation is so good that other
teams will stake their bid based on our movements. The end result, if
everyone moved on the same day, there would be too many people on the
route.
But I can say the good news is we are scheduling to head up to ABC on
Weds 14th. But there is still a lot to do to get ready to move when
we get to ABC. Assuming we can get satellite comms. up at ABC then the
next dispatch will be from there.
12th May
Everest Base Camp
Tony Kelly
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Expeditions
