Mt. Everest 2005: Carlos Pauner FROM BASE CAMP

FROM BASE CAMP By José Manuel Herraiz

It is 9 and I am about to spend my first night at Everest's base camp.  We came this afternoon and the rest of the expedition will come tomorrow.  Outside the tent there is an overwhelming landscape, with the Khumbu glacier's icefall just some hundred meters away, illuminated by the moonlight, in a clear night.  It is cold.  We are at 5,350 m. and our tents sit on the moraine, on a bed of ice and rocks.  I can't help my spirit to shrink a little.  I have left behind the merry journeys in Katmandu and the seven days of acclimatization trekking, when we carelessly crossed the beautiful landscapes of Nepal.  Now the decisive part of the adventure begins and all the elements in the game are present.  The altitude, the cold temperatures and the mountain.  For a newbie like me, everything seems ready to make me feel little and inexperienced.  "Easy Josema, just 45 days left!"  Pauner is happy of having finally come to base camp.  You can tell just by looking at him.  I suppose that after living more than a year and a half in base camps in the Himalayas and the Karakorum, it's easy to see things different.  Pérez is also an experienced man and gives me advice about how should I move around the glacier.  He doesn't want to see me fall in a frozen lake in the beginning.  The Thamserku men in charge of installing the camp have made a nice job.  Among the poverty of the environment in which we will live, we will enjoy all kind of comforts: individual tents, latrine, dinner, competent cooks, communication tents...  The filming of the documentary is going along well.  We have a few hours of good material and the lines of work which we had planed are taking form.  I am very happy and ready to continue in this new phase from base.  Pauner tells me that I am living inside a picture that I have seen before.  He is partly right.  A lot of images from the documentaries about the expeditions to Makalu, Kangchen and Gasherbrum, come to mind when a cross these landscapes.  These years of work with Pauner have made me a perfect indoors Himalayan... but here things look completely different!  The sensations multiply their intensity by ten: the admiration to a porter that drags 50 kilos of cargo by impossible paths or the beauty of the sunset on the gigantic mountains of the Himalaya.  All of this to understand the difficulty and the greatness of this job of climbing mountains.  I know that I am privileged.  I am going to be witness, in front row, of a sports challenge of first category.  I see Pérez and Pauner serene and wanting to fight hard on the mountain.  Here below we will wait, Tafalla and yours truly, working to tell you with images all what happens.  A hug for everybody who follows us and a special memory for Charo, my family and my friends in Spain.  J.M.H.

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera

Altitech2: Digital Altimeter, Barometer, Compass and Thermometer. Time/Date/Alarms. Chronograph with 24 hour working range. Timer with stop, repeat and up function. Rotating Bezel. Leveling bubble. Carabiner latch. E.L. 3 second backlight. Water resistant. 4" x 2-1/4" x 3/4" 2 oz. Requires 1 CR2032 battery. See more here.

  Altitude pre-
   acclimatization

   Ascenders

   Atlas snowshoes

   Black Diamond

   Botas

   Brunton

   Carabiners

   CaVa Climbing Shoes
   Clearance

   Clif Bar

   Cloudveil

   CMI

   Crampons

   Edelweiss ropes
   Eureka Tents

   Featured

   FoxRiver

   Garmin

   Granite Gear

   Harnesses
   Headlamps
   Helmets

   HighGear
   Ice Axes

   Kavu Eyewear

   Katadyn

   Kelty

   Kong

   Lekisport

   Lowepro

   Motorola

   Mountain Hardwear

   Mountainsmith

   MSR

   Nalgene

   New England Ropes

   Nikwax

   Omega

   Patagonia

   Pelican

   Petzl

   PowerBar

   Princeton Tec

   Prescription Glacier

   Glasses

   Primus

   Rope Bags

   Seattle Sports

   Serius
   Sleeping Bags

   Stubai

   Suunto

   Tents

   Thermarest

   Trango

   Tool Logic

   Trekking Poles
   Yaktrax
   and more here