Mt. Everest 2005: Alpine Ascents Everest 2005: Everest Base Camp

Update: Everest BC
    
Hello to all. It’s Sunday evening in the Khumbu and our team members are trickling off to bed after a some late night conversation, music listening, and a few rounds of card playing.

It’s was another typical day of weather here at BC with the morning starting out clear and beautiful and light falling snow taking over in the afternoon. It’s currently snowing heavily but should taper off over the next couple of hours. We’re in a comfortable rest and recover mode here in BC and the team is definitely patient in their waiting for the next step.

The situation here on the mountain is varied from team to team. Many teams are down in BC such as ours resting and waiting for the next push up the mountain which will entail spending a night at CIII. There are a few teams that have made the push back up recently in order to try and establish CIII and spend a night there. A few tents have been put up at CIII with others staked out and reserved for the later push up. Over the next couple of days plans will be made with some of the bigger teams to start to fix the upper mountain. Fixing lines above CIII requires a great deal of coordination with gear and manpower- primarily Sherpa. The famous Yellow Band is a section of limestone that runs throughout this area of the Himalaya and is characterized by shaper rock. Therefore that section needs more durable line than those sections of snow/ice. The Geneva Spur is then fixed en route to CIV. The route from CIV to the summit also must be fixed each season as the rope up high is lighter weight and typically doesn’t last from season to season. Some doesn’t make it through the season for what we are comfortable with. Lakpa Rita will be working with other Sirdars to plan for the fixing in the next couple of days. It’s an interesting part of the logistics that make for a successful season on Everest.

Our team had an incredible sushi lunch today that we’d like to send out a big thanks to our cook Gopal for. We then got a chance to finish up the surf flick ‘Riding Giants’ which made us all long for warm sand under our feet rather than meters and deep rock and ice. The team is getting to know eachother better during these down times and we’re all thankful for them yet always ready to get going again.

We’ve been a bit lazy getting some photos of our team around BC but I’ve given everyone the goal for tomorrow so we can get them out to you all.
All our best to everyone out there.
Dave

Dispatches

Vern Tejas, Willi Prittie, Dave Morton, Jose Luis Peralvo, and Lakpa Rita Sherpa will lead the Alpine Ascent team on Everest this Spring. They will attempt the standard South East ridge route.

GUIDE STAFF (BIOS)
Lakpa Rita Sherpa Senior Guide & Sirdar	Vern Tejas Senior Guide	Willi Prittie Senior Guide
Dave Morton Senior Guide	Jose Luis Peralvo Senior Guide	Ellie Henke Base Camp Manager
CLIMBERS
Nigel Clark	Esther Colwill	Ron Farb
Kevin Grant	Cathy Groninger	Kent Groninger
Mostafa Mahmoud	Jeanne Stawiecki	Dianette Strange-Wells
Tony Van Marken	David Liano	Danielle Fisher

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