(click
picture
to enlarge)
Our route
to the top of Mt. Everest
Mt. Everest as
seen from ABC
Walking
on the moraine between ice pinicles just below ABC. (Yellow object on
right is a broken porter’s basket.)
Pemba Sherpa
(left) and Karl (right) hauling
loads to the bottom of the North Col.
Kitchen
staffer Raj Kumar Tamang walking on the rough moraine from basecamp
to ABC
Journal
14: Arrival at Advanced Basecamp
by
Ed Hommer
Top
of the East Rongbuk Glacier
September 10, 2001
The entire team is up here now and will stay here for the next two or three days.
Although the 13-mile walk up from basecamp had its scenic moments, none of us found it to be our favorite stroll. Almost the entire distance was loose glacial rubble — stones of all shapes and sizes that were laid down by the glacier. It almost always means loose footing.
Most of the team spent two days coming up here; some made it in a long single day. I took three days to do it. You see, walking with prosthetic legs is a bit like walking on stilts at times. Go for 13 miles over a glacial moraine and it gets really interesting.
I’m here to attempt Everest, not to see how fast I can get to ABC. So, I’m pacing myself and saving my main effort and energy expenditure for the mountain.
Once you arrive here, and just prior, the view is breathtaking. It’s a challenge to accept its proportion of size. It isn’t just Everest. It’s also the last couple of miles or so walking between rows of ice pinnacles, some well over 100 feet high.
We are about 700 feet (a mile and a half in distance) below the base of the North Col. After hauling our load today, we decided to camp and start pushing the route tomorrow (September 11). If all goes well, we should have a stocked camp at the top (23,300 feet) on September 14. Once that is complete, it’s time to haul load after load of gear to the top of the North Col. We’ll continue to build the route and an additional three camps up to the northeast ridge. Ideally we want to be in position for a summit attempt on October 1.
It all sounds great on paper, but we all know there will be adventure entwined within this series of tasks. The weather pattern has remained much the same: the mornings are great but clouds roll in each afternoon. However, the snowfall has been light during the day. When the sun is out it’s actually almost too hot to stay in our tents.
All of us are looking forward to getting some actual work done the next few days, even if it’s just hauling loads to the base of the col.
So, what’s life like at 21,000 feet above sea level? Not so great! The first couple of days your appetite is off, you might have minor headaches and you’re breathing a little harder after doing things. The landscape we’re camped upon is more of the glacial rubble. The views of Everest, however, are stupendous.
We are just a little more than 8,000 feet below the summit and less than two miles from its soaring flanks. When the skies are clear at night, the countless bright stars across the coal black sky mesmerize us. We’ll close for now and we look forward to sending an update in a few days on how our work has progressed to the top of the North Col.
--Ed Hommer
