Camp III: Knocking on Heaven’s Door
One hundred feet, you can walk it in a minute or two on a beach at sea level. Heck you could crawl one hundred feet in five minutes across the hot sand in warm, moist, thick air. But one hundred feet over 24,000 feet is a very significant number, as it is only one hundred feet that Camp III is from the fabled death zone, perched on a ledge at 24,500. Camp III on April 30th was our destination for the night where we were to sleep without the aid of supplementary O2 . Our day began as usual, cold (-24 Celsius) at 6:00 am. We shivered through a light breakfast and tried to warm up our hands so we could tie our boots and put on our climbing harnesses. Our Sherpa team left shortly after breakfast to establish camp ahead of us. We struck out just before 8:00 am. Our...
Camp II
Just below the Lhotse face on a tortured jumbled moraine, at around 21,500 feet, sits a collection of tents that climbers in the Western Cwm refer to as Camp II. To get there you march up the valley of silence 2000 feet from Camp I, crossing several crevasses bridged by narrow aluminum ladders. If you do not leave early in the morning by 9:00 am you are marching through a reflector oven of high altitude rays. To combat the sun we slathered on SPF 110, but my nose still burnt. Our team is on the front end of the climb so we had the Western Cwm to ourselves. The entire morning we saw no Western Climbers and only two groups of Sherpa’s coming down after carrying to Camp II. We were carrying as well. My 50 liter pack has never been so abused. The...
Camp I
On April 15th we got up at 2:45 am to get ready to climb by gearing up and eating. We were moving in the icefall by a little after 4:00 am. Sometimes it is better to climb in the dark as you can only see what your headlamp allows you to see; you just keep moving, blissfully unaware of the enormous challenge ahead of you. By first light we arrived at our first ladder. I love climbing, but climbing rickety aluminum ladders over crevasses that are up to 150 feet deep is not my idea of fun. The vertical ladders or nearly vertical ladders are pretty easy to rip up and down on. The horizontal ladders spanning the deep crevasses are crossings that I curse and become religious about. Just before Camp I there is one last horizontal crevasse to cross. This...
Expedition Living
Everest Base Camp (EBC) is on a glacier at 17,500 feet. Our campsite consists of North Face VE 25 tents for sleeping in, a dining tent, a communications tent (which is not fully functional yet so I am hiking down to Gorak Shep to jump on the internet), a gear storage tent, a cooking tent and a domed bubble tent for relaxing in (the Yoga lounge). Our tent platforms are hacked out of the glacier ice and for further fun, the glacier has rocks spewed all over it so rocks have to be moved and made into paths and steps to make getting around camp more reasonable. Crowning the camp is our Chorten with strings of prayer flags strung over the camp in five directions. On the 8th we preformed our Puja ceremony blessing the climbers and asking the mountain...
Namche!
Sorry for the late update, as it happens from time time in the Khumbu the Internet has not been the best, plus I was suffering from a G.I. bacteria that has worked it’s way through almost every team member. I was feeling so bad that every day after the trek I just retreated into my sleeping bag for the night. The pre-everest weight I had put on is already starting to shed. Namche! We arrived into the commercial capital of Sherpa lands on the 28th. It is the hub that everything flows into up and down the Khumbu valley. Every Saturday is market day. Sherpas travel from all over the valley to trade. On our way to Namche we watched loads coming in via porter or Yak for the previous two days. Namche has every modern want and need: pubs, movies, Internet,...