Gurgeling at Everest Base Camp

“You don’t look good” said a teammate to me during Sunday’s dinner. We both laughed as I refuted his comment, > but he was right. I finished dinner and went to bed at 7:30; normal for almost all the team.

A simple gurgle then a swoosh caused my eyes to open with urgency. No, store I told myself and rolled over at 10:30, only 3 hours after bedtime. But nature was not be denied. Knowing the toilet tent was down a rocky hillside with no discernible path and loaded with loose rock, I dreaded the trip but knew it was inevitable. I pulled on my down pants, down jacket, skull cap with determination.

Avoiding the graphic details, let say that removing solid waste from the mountain would not be an issue for me this night. This scene repeated itself again only 4 hours later. I now crawled in my sleeping bag with my down jacket and pants on, my boots lined up out my tent, fireman style just in case.

My head pounded, my muscles ached and sleep was a distant dream. It was now 2:30 AM.

Kami came over at 8:00 to see if we were still on for our climb to Pumori Camp 1 this Monday morning but one look at me in the fetal piston in my bag told the story. Soon Greg came over. All I wanted to do was lie in my bag, not eat, talk move or climb a mountain. A teammate brought me some hot tea a few minutes later. I could hear hushed talk around my tent. I was hurting, not hurt.

As I went in and out of sleep the next 6 hours, I assumed this had to be a result of something I ate but also knew it was not the cooking, hygiene or food per se because no one else has experienced what I had. Mid afternoon, Greg accompanied me to the medical , EverestEr, in the center of the main Base Camp.

Rachel, a volunteer doctor from the UK took over. She asked for my symptoms: getting over a head cold, now stomach cramps, diarrhea, muscle pains, extreme lethargy, headache. “So, the usual”, she said with a smile. She had already seen a lot around Base camp this year and went on to say there were no serious bugs invading EBC; just a lot of colds. What usually took 3 days to get over at home took 7 to 10 days here. She was right, my head cold was winding down about a week after it started.

She took my vitals, listened to my lungs and stomach with her stethoscope. “All good, in fact you are in great shape.”, she said as my stomach gurgled again. The most encouraging statistic she noted was on my blood oxygen saturation which was 89%. At my normal 5,000 in Colorado it is 95%, so at 17,500′ this was excellent and implied my body was acclimatizing well to the harsh altitude.

I returned to my tent feeling better but still very tired. Obviously the plans I had made for the week of a climb to Pumori Camp 1, a trip to the Icefall and a move to Camps 1 and 2 in the Western Cwm were in jeopardy.  I fell back asleep before having some soup for dinner.

This night was uneventful, if you know what I mean, and I awoke feeling 1000% better. I made some decisions. I would not join my teammates for a sortie into the Icefall. It was only a 4 hour round trip to the Popcorn area and required leaving at 4:00 AM. I had experience in the Icefall and felt the effort versus reward was not in line for me. However, given how much better I felt, I kept my plan to climb to Camp 1 for two nights then Camp 2 for another two nights on Friday.

In climbing you have to adapt to the situation. My 24 hours was a small price to pay and I was glad to hopefully get the bad bug out of my system, so to speak.

Meanwhile I have not missed much. The winds are blowing so strong above the Icefall that some teams have lost tents at camp 2. Others report extreme cold and harsh conditions in the western Cwm. Here at Base Camp, every afternoon like clockwork, the clouds have moved in with snowfall lasting most of the afternoon.

The IMG Sherpas have established a full cooking and dining tent at Advanced Base Camp aka Camp 2 at the base of the Lhotse Face and are ready for us when we arrive. While the IMG team is the largest on the South side this year, it does not feel like it. There are actually sub teams that are on different schedules so we actually don’t see one another that much. In fact our largest sub team is smaller than some of the other large teams on the mountain this year.

My teammates left this morning at 4:00 AM and returned at 7:20 from the Icefall. They said it was straight forward to the Popcorn area and were in awe of what nature had created. My sentiments exactly from the first time I entered this flowing glacier. As I previously noted, the Icefall route is significantly faster than in years past with fewer ladders and a more direct route and little objective danger. That said, my teammates heard a few avalanches as the dawn said hello.

On a broader update, Russell Brice dropped by this afternoon and in a conservation with Jangbu and Greg, all agreed that the early preparations with the Expeditions Operators Association to organization rope fixing and logistics on Everest’s south side had paid dividends and that the team leader meeting earlier this week went extremely smooth. They felt that this season was off to one of he ever in terms of intra-team cooperation with all the teams contributing in accordance to their size. This is good news for us climbers since it means that ropes will be fixed in time and perhaps bottle necks can be better managed than in previous years.

OK, that is all for now. I am ready to get climbing but as with most things of value they require time and patience.

Climb On!
Alan
Memories are Everything