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©EverestNews.com |
Update: Thursday 14th April,
8pm. Everest Base Camp
(EST is 9 hours 45mins behind Nepal)
Eat well, keep fit and say
your prayers
Diary by Harold Mah
Everest Base Camp (Harold Mah)
The power just went off in
our tent which reminds me never to leave home without a flashlight! Technology
is a little hard to manage at Base Camp and the only things that run reliably
are my satellite phone and the HP laptop. We’re waiting for a cable to find
its way up the mountain to us. Several people knew that I was suffering with
neck pain from the weeks of sleeping rough and arranged, through Mountain
Madness, to get a pillow sent up to me from Kathmandu. Thank you. I shall have
sweet dreams tonight!
Today was a rest day. We
showered, did laundry, read, sat around and just rested. Tomorrow we will
ascend the Khumbu Ice Fall once again and go all the way to Camp 1. We will
spend the night there and then go on, half-way to Camp 2, before returning to
Base Camp. This slow process of acclimatization is needed, particularly for
Sean, as we get ever higher. Sean has a long, long way to climb to get to
29,028 feet and his body needs to be prepared. We’ve been working with the
sherpas to plan the logistics of Sean’s ascent and how we move films and
batteries and supplies to the higher camps.
Base Camp has expanded now to
accommodate 24 different expeditions and 500-700 people. It’s a small
temporary town in one of the world’s most inhospitable environments.
This evening the Brown
University party, with whom we camp, invited over a Belgian party which
included a 58 year old who got to the summit last year, providing more
inspiration for Sean. Brown University are working with NASA and have found
everyone extremely helpful when doing their research.
Sean talked to a Lama today
who conducts puja’s, or blessings, and asked him how to keep healthy. He said:
“Eat well, keep fit and say your prayers”.
I have been working with the
cameraman, Nang Chhumbi Sherpa, 26, who will be taking some climbing footage
of Sean for the Rogers programme. I told him to make sure he took pictures of
Nepal as well as Sean and to film from his heart. He lives in Kharikhola which
is about a day’s walk the other side of Lukla, with his wife and 6-month old
daughter, and comes from a big family of ten. He has been a sherpa for 7 years
and has already been to Everest 6 times and got to the top in both 2000 and
2004. I think Sean will be in safe hands. When he’s not climbing he’s a farmer
and grows potatoes, corn, wheat and millet. I asked him what he’d like to say
to Canadians about his country and he grinned and said, “Tell them it’s a
beautiful country with mountain peaks and yaks and it’s at the top of the
world”.
More later. Harold
Dispatches
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