Entries from Expedition Dispatches
After a final long day of walking we at last reached the end of the road today, arriving back at Lukla by late afternoon. With clear skies greeting us this morning we left Namche and dropped down the steep and dusty Namche Hill to the banks of the Dudh Kosi. Retracing our first days of walking several weeks ago, we wound our way along the river, through villages and fields of wheat and barley. With many miles under our feet already, and the altitude finally on our side, we made good time, quickly covering the miles between Namche and Lukla. The final hour was spent climbing the long but gentle ascent back into Lukla, arriving tired but happy, we sat down to a treat of apple struddel at our favorite bakery here in celebration of completing the trek.
The clouds have settled in on Lukla but a good forecast is issued for tomorrow. With luck we will hope on our plane first thing in the morning and be back in Kathmandu shortly thereafter!
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Categories: Expedition Dispatches Everest BC Trek
Despite the dark and heavy rain clouds that engulfed Lukla last night, the morning broke clear and sunny. After a quick breakfast we made our way to the airstrip in Lukla, sorted our bags into the proper piles, and awaited our airplane to arrive. By midmorning we were strapped into our seats, shooting down the small run way of Lukla and bound for Kathmandu.
Tonight is the Nepali New Year's Eve and Kathmandu is strangely quiet and busy in preparation for the holiday. We arrived back at the Yak and Yeti several hours ago and are enjoying some down time, showers, and fresh clothes.
It has been a long and exciting adventure here in Nepal and the team is pleased to be back. We look forward to seeing everyone at home soon.
Namaste,
Mark Tucker sending you this update from Basecamp.
Our Sherpa team had great weather for their trip to Camp Two with a big hunk of supplies for the teams nest at that 21,500 ft camp. They started out at 4:00 am this morning and returned to basecamp for lunch, these guys are tough.
The climbing team had a great day with a number of them getting their first taste of the Icefall's terrain and ladders. They went up the lower part, out of objective danger and perfected the techniques required for what will be there job for the upcoming weeks. Another group went to the top of Kala Pattar, a nearby trekking peak, at over 18,000 ft summiting without supplemental oxygen.
I spent a bunch of calories with about 60 people from many of the teams working on making a helicopter pad out of a glacier. Chopping ice, throwing rocks and moving boulders at 17,500 ft is a great test to see just how acclimatized you are.
Tomorrow Jeff Martin will head down valley starting his journey home to Ashford, WA. Jeff, more than anyone, has made this expedition become what it is, a top notch program, and a team to be proud of. This being my eleventh Everest Expedition I can say with great insight that the effort he has put in the planning and execution of this enterprise is superb. I forced him out onto the lower glacier for a few holes of wiffel golf this evening, it being our Masters Tournament, he opened a can of you know what on me, next time maybe I will whip him. The team wishes him safe travels and a big THANK YOU!
Cheers
We woke up to yet another beautiful and sunny day at Everest Base Camp. The team is still settling into the increased altitude and we are slowly ramping up our activity level in preparation for moving through the Khumbu Ice Fall. Today, we focused on ladder training as we will have numerous ladders bridging gaping crevasses and seracs between Basecamp and Camp One. Dave Hahn and Leif Whittaker decided to go for a short hike into the icefall to do their ladder practice while the rest of the team stayed in camp and created a simulated course. We rigged several ladders over the glacial rocks to simulate the icefall in which we practiced walking up and down the shaky ladders. For starters, we began in our trekking shoes stepping from rung to rung getting used to the shake and wobble of the aluminum ladders. Once everyone felt comfortable with this, we put on our stiff 8,000 meter boots and ran the course again. After this, we continued our progression and added roped hand lines while wearing crampons which best replicates the actual movement during icefall travel. With the addition of hand lines, we were able to steepen the ladder grade for both uphill and downhill travel and even practiced several "emergency" scenarios. One scenario involved stopping mid crossing and kneeling down on the ladder rungs to re-attach a crampon that had "accidentally" popped off. Although this was not a very likely scenario, it had the advantage of addressing a "possibility" while increasing confidence and agility.
Everyone did a great job showing skill and balance and we are all looking forward to moving higher onto the mountain.
Namaste from Namche Bazaar,
After a much deserved night's rest we left Chukung early this morning, leaving the high glacial moraines of the Imja Khola and making our way down the valley. Our good fortune with the weather continued, despite menacing clouds that rolled in yesterday evening. The morning was clear and warm, giving us amazing views of the mountains as we walked.
We soon left the cold reaches of over 15,000' and descended into a world of color again, first passing juniper and other short green shrubs, then into forest of pines, and finally into a riot of blooming rhododendron trees that accompanied us all the way to Namche - it is a far cry from the ice and rock of the Khumbu Glacier and Island Peak.
After over a week and a half in the high thin air of 14,000'+ the sudden immersion into blooming vegetation, thick air (and we're still at over 11,000'!), and the seemingly bustling streets of Namche has been notable. In Namche we treated ourselves to hot showers and an excellent meal. Despite a long day today the group is in fine spirits, happy to be making our way downhill and looking forward to making our way back to Kathmandu. Tomorrow we hike out to Lukla where we plan to catch an early morning flight back to Kathmandu the following day.
All is well here at Everest Base Camp and life is easy for now. We usually have breakfast around 8am (this morning we had pancakes) and relax in the warmth of the morning sun. The next few hours are spent on personal chores and taking it easy while our bodies adjust to the altitude. Lunch comes next and then is shortly followed by nap time or just relaxing in the tents. Dinner is at 6:30 sharp and dress attire is down jackets and insulated pants. Although the dining tent is quite comfortable being double walled, carpeted, and it even has a propane heater. Clearly we are not roughing it!
Everyone seems to be doing great and we are enjoying these few days of rest before we get busy. Today we had a gear review and dress rehearsal and then went for a short stroll through the lower glacier.
A special thanks tonight to Mark Tucker and Jeff Martin for providing a wonderful burrito dinner!
Namaste!
Hi, this is Linden calling in with a dispatch from Chukung.
What a day!
We woke this morning about 2 a.m. The winds that were bothering us yesterday afternoon had died down to just a whisper. We had a quick climbers breakfast and headed off up the mountain. We climbed and watched the moon rise over Makalu followed shortly by the sun. Sunrise caught us right at the base of the glacier. We kept climbing up the glacier to the base of the headwall. The team made great work ascending the 800 or so vertical feet of the fixed line, despite some adverse conditions. Everyone handled it well.
About nine in the morning were standing on the top of Island Peak. The entire team made the summit. We had the entire summit to ourselves, even though it's only about the size of a ping-pong table. After a few celebratory photos we headed back down the fixed line, to the glacier and back to High Camp. We packed up High Camp and walked all the way to Chukung. We arrived just before the last rays of sunlight disappeared. We dropped into our tea house tired, hungry but very happy.
We plan to walk to Namche tomorrow and arrive in Lukla the following day.
This is Seth saying hello from Everest Base Camp!
This is the team's second full day at base camp and we're steadily getting our communications gear online. We've got a large solar array and we are able to power all of our communication equipment completely by the sun. As you can imagine, though, getting several computers up and running for email access is not a trivial task at 17,500 feet in the heart of the Himalaya. That said, all of the planning and hard work that my boss, Jeff Martin, and our Basecamp Manager, Mark Tucker, have put in is paying off and we'll all be able to email and call our families and friends shortly.
It's not all about the modern conveniences here though. We've also been busy becoming a part of the base camp community. Last night we paid a visit to the Icefall Doctors and the Himalayan Rescue Association. RMI and First Ascent have made generous clothing and gear donations to the Icefall Doctors this season and last. Last night we dropped off new climbing clothes for 'the docs'. Those guys work extremely hard at establishing and maintaining the fixed ropes and ladders through the icefall so that the expeditions can focus on the upper parts of the mountain. It was great to be able to show our appreciation by giving them brand new climbing gear.
After visiting the Icefall Doctors we dropped by the HRA to visit the medical doctors at base camp. We had a few clothing items from First Ascent to share with them as well. The HRA is a full medical clinic that is open to anyone here at base camp. This allows expeditions to pool their money to fund the clinic as opposed to each expedition brining their own doctors. The doctors at the clinic usually conduct some kind of research and this year they are working on treatments for the notorious 'Khumbu Cough'. It's nice to know that there is work being done on a treatment for the painful cough; I just hope that no one in our expedition becomes part of the study.
We've also started to think about heading up the mountain. Today we had our Puja. This ceremony involves a blessing by a Buddhist Lama and the raising of our Puja Pole. It is also a big party and folks from around base camp dropped by to help us celebrate. Our camp is now laced with prayer flags and we have all been blessed and are now free to move up the mountain. This is most important for our Sherpa team as they do not enter the icefall until after the ceremony. Now that we've had our Puja we will spend several days practicing for the icefall and upping our acclimatization. Then we'll be ready to start our first rotations up into the Western Cwm. Wish us luck!
Hi, this is Linden checking in with the Island Peak Team from High Camp on Island Peak.
We packed up camp this morning and climbed to just shy of 18,000', to our High Camp here on Island Peak. We are camped about 1,500' feet below the glacier and will have some more moderate rock scrambling to get up to the approach to the climb.
We went up this afternoon to get the route fixed in. Everything looks good and we are planning to leave tomorrow morning about 3 a.m. for our summit bid. Our plan is to climb to the summit of Island Peak and then descend to High Camp and Base Camp and head back to Chukung.
We will give a call tomorrow night from Chukung hopefully with good news. We had a little bit of wind today so keep your fingers crossed that it will hold off until we are back at High Camp. The team is doing well and everyone is excited for the climb. We are about to head off to bed and we'll check in again tomorrow.
Namaste from Everest Basecamp.
Our first full day at Mount Everest began with saying goodbye to Scott's Dad, Jeff. As planned, he headed down valley this morning just after a sumptuous breakfast in our dining tent. The team enjoyed mild temperatures and an "easy" day resting and getting organized at 17,500 ft above sea level. We met for a strategy session in which we discussed plans for first week of the climb as well as for "big picture" plans for the how the rest of the climb might play out. Jeff Martin and Mark Tucker worked hard to buff out our electrical and communications systems (we rely largely on solar energy, satelite link-ups and handheld radios in these areas). Importantly, we gathered the entire team so that the American climbers could get to know the Nepali team members and vice versa. Tendi Sherpa and Lama Babu -along with our great chef Kumar- facillitated the introductions. We spent the afternoon resting and chatting. We intend to meet with the famous and hard-working "Icefall Doctors" who are currently putting in the climbing route through the Khumbu, and later we'll tour the Himalayan Rescue Association's basecamp clinic and meet the medical doctors. It seems abnormally hot and dry for early April, and each afternoon we've seen the air get murky with forest fire smoke from somewhere down valley. A quiet day has been punctuated by giant ice avalanches off the surrounding glaciers... keeping things interesting.
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