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  Everest 2006: Fi and Paul: Back at Base Camp


Location: Everest Base Camp
Altitude: 5350m
Local Time: Wed 12th April, 5:40pm
Weather: Mainly sunny and very windy, 5C

Hi all - Fiona here,

Paul and I are now back at base camp with the rest of the team.

Back at Base Camp
We hiked up today from Lobuche and were again pleasantly surprised to find that we're making better times - despite the fact that it still feels like a lot of hard work! We got back to base camp in time for lunch - which was good as we'd been missing the base camp food. Although the lodge food is also good, we found that when we were ordering for ourselves, it seemed as though we don't quite eat enough and after a few days, we were getting quite hungry.

All the climbers are now back at base camp - one guy is here to climb to Camp 2 but all the rest (16 in total) are here to make an attempt for the summit.

Selecting food for our first trip up to Camp 1
We heard today that the Icefall Doctors expect to finish putting the route in to Camp 1 by tomorrow, so the Sherpa team here is planning to follow them tomorrow and go up to set up Camp 1. This means that we could possibly go up to Camp 1 on Friday. However, we haven't yet decided whether we will do this or wait longer so that Camp 2 is set up and we can go to both in the same trip (this would probably make the trip around 5 days in length). We'll hopefully find out how far off Camp 2 is in the next day or so and make a decision then. It's still very early in the season so there's not really any rush as far as we can tell.

Right now though the Sherpa team is preparing their loads to take up to Camp 1 - possibly leaving tomorrow morning. So this afternoon we all had to put together a bag of food that we'd want to eat at this camp; 2-3 days worth. The food storage tent became a free-for-all as we all crowded in and started pulling things out of boxes like kids let loose in a candy store! There seems to be plenty of food here and lots of variety. We selected several instant dinners (some the US Army use and want tested at altitude), flavoured porridge packets, biscuits, cheese, beef jerky, plenty of chocolate bars, jubes, noodles, instant soups, instant mashed potato and nuts. Often at high altitude your appetite is reduced so a wide selection will hopefully ensure that we get enough calories into us.

The Sherpa team will also be taking up tents, sleeping rolls, sleeping bags and stoves for us to use at Camp 1.

The rest of our day was spent reading in our tent and drinking lots of hot chocolate in the dining tent.

While we were having a break down lower, our own Sherpas (Mingma and Dasona) went to visit their families - since there's not a lot they can do now at the moment we thought there was no point them hanging around here and they might as well have a break while they can. They should be returning sometime today or tomorrow.

Nothing much else to report for now.
Cheers to everyone, Fi

Updates

 

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