FLASHBACK FRIDAY!Â
Here’s a blog from a few weeks ago, right before Nick made history!Â
Week 6: The Day Before The SummitÂ
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!Â
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.
Last year and the year before they were indispensable when disaster struck. The Everest ER, founded by Luanne Freer, works in part with the Himalayan Rescue Association which has other locations in Nepal and helps locals and tourists alike. You can learn more about what they accomplish at EverestER.org.
