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...
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...