Climbing in Place

With yesterday’s fresh snow, try teams were content to take a day or so to let it settle. Unlike expeditions on Denali where you are stuck for a week at the 14 camp or High Camp in your tent or snow cave, on Everest, climbers have the luxury of large tents, folding chairs and tables. And at Base camp, heaters!

Some climbers take down time to the extreme. Simone Moro, who in addition to climbing for himself, is first guiding a member on Everest returned to Kathmandu via helicopter from base Camp for their R&R!!

But the weather always has the final say on each day As Eric Simonson of IMG simply said

I talked to Phil Ershler on the sat phone, and he reports that nobody moved on the mountain today after a healthy overnight snowfall of at least 6 inches.

So wait it is. I like what TA Loeffler said:

Hi this is TA calling in from the poker room also know as the dinning tent, there are five of us here that have been involved in marathon climb of epic card proportions, we are on our 6 ½ or 7th hour of playing cards.  It was a fabulous day; we even got to turn on the heaters at 3 o’clock this afternoon.  Why where we playing cards for 6 or seven hours today? Well that because it snow about 6 inches here at base camp last night, perhaps even as much as a foot up at camp 2.  Thus we declared it a “Snow Day”, those of us who grew up in Canada, know that a snow day is a great excuse to sit around, play cards, drink lots of hot drinks, rest up, and say “wow what a wonderful day to laugh out load”.

So that’s what’s on the go here, depending on the weather things may start moving up and down the mountain again tomorrow.  I’m looking to maybe head up on the 4th for my little rotation.  I’m out of the current card game at the moment, that’s why I could call in this update.  So all is well here at base camp, spirits are good, food is delicious as we are a smaller group with about half down resting in Pheriche.  Hope you are having a great day, hope you are stepping up to the summit challenge.  Talk to you tomorrow.

This is TA’s second attempt on Everest and had high hopes. But illness has kept her from going beyond Base Camp. She is with Peak Freaks. I met with TA a few weeks before she left for Everest and was impressed with her training and attitude. This is certainly not what she envisioned. But there is still time for her to catch up in the acclimatization rotations and go for the top. Climb On TA!

With this downtime, it is interesting to read the post of  EverestEr. They are a totally volunteer organization to provide medical services to climbers, and more importantly, to Sherpas, porters and the local community – these last at no charge. Expeditions used to bring a doctor along but now depend on EverestER. Think about it for a minute. You go to the remote regions of northern Neal and you can get western quality medical care for $100 throughout the expedition. Now that’s health care reform!

we’ve been busy in the , setting all-time records having seen 227 people so far. It’s not because the EBC community is especially or clumsy this year, it’s because we’re the go-to medical advice for most of base camp now, most teams having made the switch over from bringing their private doctors. We are happy to be busy and to have our services valued by so many.

To finish things off today, I have to point you to Bill Fischer’s blog. He and his climbing partner Julio Bird are at ABC on the north. Bill is turning into one of my favorite blogger because of his raw skill of telling it like he sees it. Kind of like Walter Matthau in Grumpy Old Men, you sometimes cringe, but you know he is right. Once again, he gets the Blog of the Day

As for animal life you would be surprised to know that there are plenty of black crows and little sparrows to eat up all the leftovers and in our dining tent we have a family of 3 mice. Not rats but mice which are much cuter and easier to live with …I met Rolf down at BC when he was trying to negotiate the Yak herders. He came over and we started talking about the art of the deal with them. He said he ordered and paid for 16 extra yaks in addition to the 18 he already paid for. He said look around and count how many yaks there are, 14. Then the Yak herders told him he owed an additional $3,000 or they weren’t going to move his gear. WTF. Guess who you pay for your yaks???? Yes, the Chinese. Once again skimming off the top. Talk about how to shoot yourself in the foot.

One more item to note, Tim Rippel tells us that Nepal Telecom has turned on coverage for Everest. When first announced they said it would reach the summit but let’s wait for confirmation before making that claim:

It has been on the table for a couple years now but there were issues with permits. Two towers were installed at Gorak Shep and the Sherpas are extremely happy with the news they got today. This will benefit them the most, they can easily call home now to check in on their families to let them know they are ok. For us, not much difference as the rates for cell phones are higher than using satellite phones to phone internationally. Exciting times for the Everest community.

On Monday – Nepal time, the weather cleared enough to continue some climbing on the Lhotse face. But another storm is expected for Thursday.

Climb On!

Alan