Mt. Everest 2005: Valencia Camp Two

This morning we have let time slip by until the heat in the tent was not tolerable.  In fact we were already awake for some hours, but nobody made an effort to go out, it was like when it is cold because the door is open and everybody knows, but nobody gets up to close it... Yes, maybe it is not important for you, but these last days in BC it was very usual... In fact, one of the few new words we have learned in Nepalese is: Rogatun! Which means: "close the door".

Well, nobody wanted to go out this morning, and until Haya had to go for a nature call, nobody had gone out of his sleeping bag.

In the mountain you have to know how to wait sometimes, and know how to spend the day without doing nothing.  The problem is that we are here in CII, with the summit of Everest just 2,500 meters above our heads, and we see how it calls us up little by little: COME UP, COME UP!!!  But we can not acknowledge its call, we don't have the strength or acclimatization needed yet... But we will, for sure, it is only a matter of knowing how to wait.

Well, you possibly note that this note is written somehow oddly... The explanation is that we are writing this chronicle for the first time on a PDA, which you all know that means Putrid Device for Alpinists.

No, it's not true, it is great not to climb with a computer to CII.  But when you are cold, all of you inside your sleeping bag except your hands typing on the PDA, with a little stick in the hand with which you click the virtual keys (because the other options is to try to get this little device to recognize your handwriting, and I think that is impossible, until someone proves me wrong), and you take all afternoon trying to find tildes (needed to write in Spanish) in a gadget smaller than a pack of cigarettes, there comes a moment when you forget what the heck you want to tell, and the only thing in your mind is the little stick and the key you want...

Well, after whining about this wonderful gadget, lets go back to how the day went.

Finally, at 12:00 Haya and Jorge have decided to walk to CIII. David, who had a sore throat, decided to stay in the tent to recover. 

Our stroll only took us to the last tents of CII and then shoot some pictures about what waited for us up to CIII, well, such a shame!!!

After the stroll we went back down to our tent, and then we started a frenzy afternoon: get in the sack, eat a little of this, drink a little more, turn in your sack... and, you see, write this chronicle with a little stick!!!

But, since all good comes to an end, this chronicles ends here...  We hope to get used to the little stick and hope the next one is more interesting...

If we don't, we will call Endika and he will write it, because he did it well during the trekking...

Good night

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera

Jorge Verdeguer	David Rosa
Juan José Haya	Endika Urtaran

This is their second expedition to Everest, this time via the South Face.  They have already tried the North Face in 2001. They will hire two Sherpas for the expedition.

Previous feats:

·         1996 Bolivian Andes, summit of Illimani, 6490 m and other 6.000 m. peaks.

·         1998 Cho-Oyu.  Jorge and Endika made it to the summit, 8.201 m. and David gave up just 700m. from the summit.

·         2.000 Manaslu (8.163m.), did not make it to the summit due to bad weather, first time in the Himalayas for Haya.

·         2.001 Everest North Face, Jorge reached the summit, 8.848m., David was 200m. down because of a malfunction of the oxygen equipment, and Endika around 500 m. below.

·         2.002 David, Jorge and Endika went to the Geographic North Pole after a trip of more than 20 days over frozen ocean.

·         2003 defeated by Nanga Parbat, just got to Camp II.

All the expeditions have been sponsored by Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.

Jorge Rivera

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