#cfvseverest

FLASHBACK FRIDAY! 

Week 8: Coming Home

May 31, 2016

Today is the day I was originally meant to leave Nepal to fly home but since Nick and the team summited earlier than most seasons I have been home for exactly a week. It has been exactly two weeks since I departed base camp. It seems like it has been much longer.

After Nick and the team reached the summit on May 13th they spent that night sleeping on oxygen at Camp IV. The next night was spent at Camp II and on the third day they arrived home, well to base camp, where I proceeded to give Nick a gigantic hug. I spent the day listen to Nick and the others as they recounted their experience of the summit. They talked about having a troublesome start because it took nearly two hours to find the fixed lines in the snow outside of Camp IV. Then when some unexpected gusts of winds threatened to turn them around Pemchhirri urged them to wait. They had enough oxygen so they sheltered by a rock formation for about half an hour above 8,000m. Thankfully, instead of worsening and creating storm conditions, the winds subsided enough for them to continue on to reach the summit.

The team took a day at base camp to rest and pack. I took the opportunity to interview Nick, David, and Pemchhiri.  On May 17th we walked out of base camp. We stopped into Gorak Shep for tea so I could say goodbye to my friends Pasang and Chitra from last year. Pasang asked me if I would be returning next year. I said “No” but maybe in the future. We trekked from base camp to Pangboche in the first day and from Pangboche to Namche in the second day to arrive in Lukla on the third. That is 42 miles in three days.

The next day our chances of flying out by airplane were dashed before breakfast. The clouds that had been plaguing the airport town for the past week, backing up air traffic, set in once more.  Two years before though, Nick and another repeat member of this years team, Steve, had been delayed in Lukla for several days  due to weather and eventually Jagged Globe chartered a helicopter to take the team down to Kathmandu rather than have to change the dates of their commercial flights home to Heathrow. Steve was not keen to repeat the past so he arranged for our team to helicopter out that day. So Steve, if you are reading this, THANK YOU. It was an exciting flight, at least for the first five minutes before the clouds really broke. We took off from Lukla at the slightest sign of a break in the fog. It was not much of a break but it was enough for the pilot to navigate over the hillside under the clouds through a series of steep turns no more that one hundred feet above the ground. I would bet you that Nepal is home to some of the world’s best helicopter pilots.

We arrived in Kathmandu after an hour ride. The feeling of stepping on smooth pavement was disorienting after nearly two months of rocky uneven terrain. The chaotic traffic of Kathmandu made the nine kilometer bus trip to our hotel nearly as long as our 138km helicopter flight from Lukla. The hotel was absolute luxury compared to how we had been living. I took two showers the afternoon we arrived and lounged in the provided bathrobe. Nick finagled a flight departing the next morning so we all had a goodbye drink in the hotel bar that evening. I woke up at 6 am the next morning to have breakfast with Nick and bid him farewell. We’d become good friends and shared so many unique experiences that I was sad to say goodbye. When the time came I was sad to say goodbye to everyone actually, especially when the others spoke about meeting up in London because I knew I would be an ocean away.

Mary and I did some sight seeing in Kathmandu one afternoon. I finally saw The Monkey Temple. It was impressive but I was disappointed that most of the monkeys I saw were picking through the trash on the hillside. We also checked out Durbar Square in Patan. The square was full of old Buddhist temples. We even saw a low budget movie being filmed complete with back up dancers. The sight seeing didn’t go farther than that though. The city with it’s heavy traffic, dust, and heat was a bit too much for our exhausted bodies and our minds used to the tranquility of the mountains. One night the team remaining in Kathmandu had a celebratory dinner with many of the team’s Nepali climbers. For two of the Nepal climbers it was also their first Mount Everest summit.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY! 

Here’s a blog from a few weeks ago, right before Nick made history! 

Week 6: The Day Before The Summit 

May 12, 2016

It is an exciting time here at Mt. Everest base camp. The ropes to the summit were officially fixed as of 5:15 pm yesterday. Nick and his teammates are currently on their way to Camp IV!

Nick and his two team members left base camp at 1am on May 9th along with Expedition Leader, David Hamilton, and Sirdar Pemchhiri Sherpa for Camp Two. They spent a rest day there before arriving in Camp III yesterday. Today they will have about a five hour nap at Camp IV before heading out at 9 pm tonight to make their way to the summit. Provided all goes as planned they will summit around 6 am on Friday the13th!

By the time you are reading this blog though you will have read all about the team’s summit attempt in a short blog I will have written as soon as I know all the news! 

The Jagged Globe base camp manager, Rachael, and myself will be spending tonight in the Communications tent so that we do not miss a radio call or an ounce of news on their progress. Nick and the team were eager to go up for this first summit window of the season. After the 15th winds will set in for a few days and right now it looks like the next summit window will be around the 18th.

I am happy that the team is ready for this window as I am ready to trek out of base camp. I have adjusted well to the high altitude but now that I have been here for over a month I can feel the energy draining out of me. I am eating well and sleeping better than before but I am tired. It will be nice to go lower and get that amazing feeling that comes with breathing more oxygen with each breath. I could not imagine living my whole life breathing this little oxygen every day like so many people with Cystic Fibrosis experience as the disease progresses. I can partially understand the struggle now of staying fit and improving your health through exercise when breathing such little oxygen leaves someone feeling so fatigued.

I have had some fun lately experimenting with long exposure time lapses of climbers going up through the icefall at night. Our chef here at base camp takes long exposures as a hobby so when the team went up on the 9th we stayed up with our cameras. I also took the Sony FS5 into the icefall a few days ago and filmed some super slow motion shots of the glacier melting.

Today I was able to film an interview with one of the volunteer doctors working at the Everest ER. This is the first place to go if you are not feeling well at base camp or farther up the mountain. The service they provide is phenomenal and I know the doctors there have saved many lives.

Throwback Thursday! 

Here’s a blog from a few weeks ago, when Sierra was waiting for Nick to Summit! 

Week 5: A Holiday Hike to Kala Plathar

May 4, 2016

- as written by Director of Cinematography, Sierra Johansen-

The summit is getting close now! Well, hopefully. The team is on their last acclimatization rotation before the summit push and there is a weather window coming up (unless the weather changes but when does that ever happen haha!). 

Nick spent last night at Camp Three and is currently on his way down to Camp 2. Tomorrow, the plan is to return to basecamp for several rest days before heading back up. The lines have not yet been fixed all the way to the summit because of extremely high winds but rumor has it the winds should die down a bit after tomorrow.

I have been going a little stir crazy here at basecamp; not exactly for lack of things to do but for living in a tent for so long. And actually it’s not even the living in the tent or getting tangled in the sleeping bag at night but it’s the cold that sets in every afternoon and the creaking and crashing of the Khumbu Glacier. I am convinced there is a crevasse under my tent due to a gurgling fountain that sprang up underneath it. The solution was to just shove rocks and dirt under my tent but I am going to move tents soon or drive myself mad thinking about it.

Damian, a scientist living at the Jagged Globe base camp, and myself took a little holiday a few days ago down to Gorak Shep where we spent the night. It is amazing how homey that lodge is to me after living there last year and also because I have been confined to tents for the past month. It was lovely to sleep in a tiny wood frame bed and to sit at a table with a real roof over my head. 

The next morning we headed up Kala Plathar, a popular viewpoint for tourists coming up the valley. From the top, at 5545m, you have a good view of Mt. Everest and Everest base camp although maybe not as great as the view from Pumori Advanced Base Camp. It is a long hike but well worth it. Last year the summit was cold and windy. This year it was warm and pleasant.

We hung out at the top for a long while and befriended the trekkers at the top. That was good fun. Besides one Frenchman and one Swed, they were all east coast Americans which was wonderful because I had been feeling as if not enough American’s took interest in trekking in Nepal. But then I turned around and there were people that were practically my neighbors! We all had lunch together afterwards and I learned that many of them had been traveling for several months. One girl, Jackie, had actually been traveling for nine months and wasn’t quite finished yet. 

Speaking with these trekkers that were all around my age was enlightening. I got a perspective on what trekking in Nepal would be like for me if I wasn’t here to work. It was also nice to see how capable and level headed they were. I say this because so many trekkers come up to this altitude without knowing the possible repercussions. An uninformed trekker might insist on being helicoptered lower down the valley because they can’t sleep at night or they have a headache, both of which are extremely normal at this altitude. We invited the trekkers to see our base camp but the weather turned bad on our way and they only got a glimpse at our camp. Most trekkers hike all the way to the outskirts of base camp to take a picture near Trekker’s Rock. I think if my holiday destination was base camp I would at least like to venture in and try to speak with a climber or two.

THE SUMMIT!

May 13th, 2016 

- as written by Director of Cinematography, Sierra Johansen-

Down at base camp we recieved confirmation that Nick reached the summit of Mount Everest at 9:45 am local time on May Friday the 13th! 

I will have to wait to see him to get all the joyful and brutal details. I spent most of the night awake. Although, I did get more sleep than our wonderful base camp manager, Rachael, who had none. At 5:30 am Rachael, our chef Antony, and I were all up and listening eagerly for news as the team got closer to the summit. We didn't hear from the team until they reached the balcony, a feature on the mountain a few hours from the summit. Our communications were sparse and sometimes conducted through the Camp Two cook. 

Most of our information was coming from a spot tracker that expedition leader, David Hamilton, was wearing. At one point we heard unexpected gusts of winds  (up to 30 knots) and were giving the team difficulty. That knowledge combined with spot track lower down the mountain had us fearing that the team had turned back!  But the spot wasn't exactly accurate the whole time and we got a summit call sooner that we would have thought!

1 Year and 5 Days Ago

- as written by Director of Cinematography, Sierra Johansen-

Five days ago was the one year anniversary of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that devastated Nepal and caused a massive chunk of ice and rock to break off Pumori and all but destroy Mount Everest Base Camp. 

At 11:56 am, the exact time the earthquake struck last year, there was a moment of silence for all those who wished to participate. I was surprised in that minute to find that the emotions I would have expected to come flooding back to me did not. I thought I would feel fear, loss, helplessness, all the emotions that I experienced a year and five days ago. Instead, I had trouble remembering all the devastation I witnessed as I felt the warm sunlight on my face and looked upon the rugged snow capped mountains set against the clear blue sky. It’s hard to fathom that this beautiful timeless setting was the same place of so much heartbreak. 

I haven’t had internet for the past few days so I wasn’t able to post a message on April 25th urging people to remember the catastrophe, to remember the dead and injured or to ask people to donate to a country still very much in need. That is okay though because it shouldn’t take an anniversary or another man-made mile stone for people to remember such an important event. That’s what I realized during the moment of silence. I have been remembering the earthquake since it happened. It has taken me a whole year and returning to Nepal to really come to terms with what the earthquake meant to me. 

I came to Nepal last year eager to begin my career traveling and filming the way I always wanted to. I made up for what I lacked in experience with enthusiasm. Meredith and I fought so hard to make the trip happen for Mike and myself that I was beaming ear to ear when I finally got on the plane for Nepal. That was last year, this year I cried when I got on the plane. 

A week after I got home last year I knew I wanted to return to Nepal. Nick wanted to try again and that was enough to convince me that we had to finish telling our story. It wasn’t until this winter that I realized how emotionally trying a return would be and it wasn’t until a few weeks before this trip that I knew how homesick I would be. I have never been homesick before, not last year, not even after the earthquake. I had wanted to stay in Nepal for a little bit longer. As soon as I got home from Nepal, I had to leave again. I spent most of the summer traveling, avoiding the fact that the earthquake had ripped me out of a dream and plopped me down into a nightmare; teaching me what real fear and instantaneous loss feels like. I changed the moment the earthquake struck but I didn’t realize it for months afterwards.  

Last fall when I finally returned home I got physically sick. One part of my body after another seemed to succumb to some ailment that I couldn’t explain. It took some time before the realization came that my body was responding physically to the trauma of last April and that it was time for me to confront the emotional trauma I had suffered too. 

I had never before feared for my life, not really, and while I had experienced loss before it had never been so sudden. On the surface I mourned a friend’s death, another trip come to a bad end for Nick, and for the film that now had a life of it’s own. Deep down though, I’ve come to realize, that I was also mourning the person that I was before the earthquake. Before I was much more fearless, optimistic, ready for any travel adventure and wanting to experience everything that was new and exciting. Now I think I am more cautious. Over the past few months I have been gripped at times by an irrational fear. When I had a sinus infection in October, that stuck around for weeks, I got so wound up thinking that something more was wrong with me that I nearly had a panic attack and went to the hospital to have a CT scan just to prove to myself that I didn’t have something wrong with my brain. Fear is a tricky thing, I think. Once you’ve experienced it it’s easy to remember.  

I tried very hard last summer to try to hold onto the person I was before the earthquake by traveling around on a whim and living without much consideration but now that I feel at peace with myself, I’d like to think that I learned from the earthquake and am a better person for it. I appreciate life more for one thing. I know that is cliche but it’s entirely true. I’d rather be surrounded by the ones I love than off traveling somewhere new. I’ve learned to lean on people now when I need help. It’s okay to be scared or unable to do something or to miss somebody. That’s why I cried when I got on the plane to Nepal. I knew that coming back here would be hard. There would be times I would be scared, like when a particularly big avalanche sounds in the night. There would be times I could not do something and most of all I knew I would be incredibly homesick for the first time in my life. 

Week 3: Life at Base Camp

-as written by Director of Cinematography, Sierra Johansen-

-Photo Credit: Matt Dickinson- 

April 18, 2016

The first week at basecamp has held a few ups and downs for me. On the upside, it is beautiful. On a sunny morning it is warm, the snow is crisp, and the mountains that surround me are nothing short of majestic. I am in the company of very interesting and capable people here; people who are following a passion that seems to come before anything else. 

Also, the food has been delicious. We have a western cook named,Anthony, who has experience cooking in extreme situations: Antartica, off-shore oil rigs and yachts off the French Riviera. 

On the down side I am not feeling very well. At least not as well as last year. I think a combination of a pulled muscle and heart burn have been giving me grief. These are small issues at normal altitude but not up here. I went to the Himalayan Rescue Associations (HRA) Clinic here at base camp and the Everest ER. I spoke to the doctors there who gave me some heart burn medication which has helped a bit. I have been debating walking down the Khumbu Valley to the village of Pheriche to rest at a lower altitude to see if I can heal what ails me.Our base camp manager this season, Rachael, is perhaps the most qualified doctor from the HRA though and she gave me a medical consult that has helped me feel somewhat better.

Week 2: Sierra Treks Up to Base Camp 

- as written by Director of Cinematography, Sierra Johansen-

APRIL 13, 2016

I was adopted quite nicely into the small group of Dutch trekkers that walked with me up to Everest Base Camp. Trekkers tend to have a slightly shorter acclimatization process which left me feeling slightly off balance as I trekked above 4,000 meters. On our acclimatization day in Dingboche, a day where we sleep at the same altitude as the night before, I kept mostly to my bed while the others went for a hike up to see a view of Makalu and Cho Oyu. I was roused from bed in the late afternoon with the promise of apple pie from DIngboche’s French Bakery, the last bakery on the trail up to Everest Base Camp (EBC). The Dutch group taught me how to play “Toupe” a fun slightly odd card game that involves bluffing and I was really pretty good at it.  

I decided not to further rush my acclimatization so I did not meet up with Nick on the 8th in Lobouche. I arrived in Lobouche on the 9th. One day behind, I spent the next night at Gorak Shep, my home from last year. It was comforting to be somewhere so familiar and even though the lodges that high provide the least amount of comforts,I was incredibly happy to be there. I talked with my friends, the lodge workers, who helped Mike and I feel at home last year. I felt a little bit like I had come home, as much as you could 5,000 meters above sea level. 

I said goodbye to my new Dutch friends on the 11th when they I finally reached EBC. It was a relief to finally rejoin Nick and the team. During the day it has been sunny and warm with the exception of this afternoon. The company is good and the food is incredible. I’ve done some laundry and had a hot shower so I am starting to settle in here. I have been having some pretty terrible headaches though, I think from coming up too fast but those should subside soon. 

The worst part is sleeping here at night. It’s not that it’s cold but it’s the noise. The first night I slept here was not so bad, the avalanches I heard compared to ocean waves crashing along a beach. Last night though, combined with a horrible headache and lack of sleep, the avalanches and creaks threw me into a panic every time. If I hadn’t witnessed the aftermath of last year it probably wouldn’t bother me so much but of course it is on everyone’s mind.  

Kathmandu has had two earthquakes in the past few days, one was, 4.5 and the other, 4.9. No one was hurt physically but I imagine it is emotionally scarring. I am hoping that I will not witness another tremble because that’s my worst fear.

Feeling rough as a badger's.... A Scottish friend I once lived with introduced me to the expression Feeling rough as a badger's arse, it was usually when he was incredibly hungover (a couple of times a week), he could certainly drink a lot, and certainly regretted it on an equally frequent basis.

He has a healthier lifestyle now as it would seem his little children don't understand what a hangover is. It never occurred to me to ask him how he came about this knowledge that a badger's arse is rough but I think rather than ask him I'll just take his word for it. That's how I'm feeling currently. I had a meeting with someone with a bad cough and knew I'd be lucky to escape getting it. That's 2 from 2 instances in the last month. This brought the benefits of a full blown cold, and a wonderful cough, wheezing and all which I try and mask when with other people or they wonder if they'll catch something really bad... It has enforced a rest for my ankle as I can't go up 2 flights of stairs without having to breath really heavily so enforced rest is on the cards, probably good in some ways to have both problems at a similar time. Any change in temperature, or position if I'm sleeping and I start coughing and can't stop for some time, it brings it home how quickly good health can disintegrate. I'm lucky, I've increased my medications and whilst bad for training chances are I will be better soon.