Canadian Mt. Everest 2005 Expedition: An internet cafe and the highest bakery in the world

Today was a day to rest and acclimatise in Namche Bazar, a 200 year old town of may be 500 people. This morning I was up early and had the pleasure of watching the town wake up and see a building crew get to work on a house construction at 6am. We split up to learn more about Nepal and the people and see the sights. Some members of the party made a three hour trek up the mountain behind the town to get a better view of Mount Everest. On their way, they passed by the old National Parks HQ which has now been converted to an army outpost to protect visitors against the rebels. Another group had lunch at Khonjung bakery, a place that calls itself “The highest bakery in the world”. They even brought back some pizza for the rest of us!

Sean Egan was privileged to be invited to visit the home of the senior sherpa, which was a beautiful 200 year old home and was treated very well. Lisa Koperqualuk spent time with the members of a youth club to learn more about Namche Bazar. Yvan Pouliot met with the National Parks Group, which is responsible for waste management, to continue with his research on human waste management at Everest Base Camp. Dave Valliere and Chris Archer met with a local sherpa entrepreneur who is running an internet café in Namche Bazar and is planning to set up an outpost at Everest Base Camp next year to cater for the hikers and climbers. Dr Keith Burgess (who joined the party in Kathmandu, from Australia) paid a visit to the Sir Edmund Hillary hospital and met with local physicians.

I spent a lot of the day testing the technology with Howard Sklivas and Nicole LeBlanc from Hewlett Packard. We got the satellite system and wireless network working and we even had a reason to use it. One of the researchers lost some critical data from his iPAQ – it was statistics on expedition members’ heart rates and oxygen saturation levels – and we managed to recover the data over the network from the server.

Showers were available, for the first time in three days and as a result, dinner was a far more pleasant experience!

Everyone feels safe and welcome. The Nepalese are unfailingly friendly, kind and extremely hard working.

More later. Terry

Background

On March 25th 2005, a party of Canadian climbers and hikers will set off on an assault on the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest.

The expedition will be led by Dr Sean Egan, an accomplished mountaineer and professor in the School of Human Kinetics at University of Ottawa, and Peter Luk, director, School of Business Management, Ryerson University .

Accompanying the climbing expedition for three weeks is a party of hikers that includes senior IT executives from private and public Canadian organizations and leaders from the Ryerson University Business School . They will trek through Nepal to the Everest Base Camp, starting from the exotic city of Kathmandu.

The expedition is sponsored by Kanatek Technologies, an independent storage systems integrator based in Ottawa , specializing in data availability, email archiving, and back up and recovery solutions. Kanatek has a long tradition of hosting innovative events and Kanatek president, Terry Kell says, “We want to put Canadian IT solutions on top of the world. We will be using the latest in communications technology to demonstrate data recovery in a hostile environment.”

The expedition is co-sponsored by ProCurve Networking by HP, a supplier of enterprise networking solutions, and SkyWave Mobile Communications, a world leader in satellite-based asset tracking, monitoring, and control.

Expedition leader, Dr Egan, says, “Two very well-respected Canadian universities are working together on this expedition to complete some vital research. If we can get to the summit it will be an added bonus.”

University of Ottawa and Ryerson University have prepared research plans on coping with hypoxia (an absence of oxygen reaching living tissues) , the relationships between fitness and ageing, and sport tourism in the context of extreme adventure.

This is Dr Egan's third trip to the mountain, and it will be his first summit attempt. If he his successful in his bid, he will be the oldest Canadian to summit Mount Everest . In preparation for his Everest expedition, Dr Egan is currently conditioning by climbing Mount Aconcagua in Argentina (22,841 feet). Mount Everest is 29,028 feet.

It is also planned to play a game of shinny hockey around the Khumbu glacier on Mount Everest, taking the game to new heights.

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