Firat Eren

From a series of dispatches from the Alpine Ascents 2007 Everest Expedition team.

The name of the game today is WIND. Gusts rattled the tents from about midnight through the wee hours of the morning, making sleep a little difficult. It was still blowing around 4:30 am when our intrepid team members roused themselves out of their warm sleeping bags, wolfed down some breakfast, put on their climbing harnesses, and headed up into the icefall for their second acclimatization trip up the mountain. From base camp we watched a line of dots as climbers from several different teams left base camp and headed for Camps 1 and 2. We also watched huge plumes of spindrift snow blowing off all the surrounding peaks. Ang Tshering at Camp 2 called in around 8:00 and told us it was cold and windy up there as well, so our Camp 2 staff was hunkered down in the tents trying to stay warm.

Today our climbing members are heading for Camp 1, where they will spend the night before continuing on to Camp 2 tomorrow. Their ultimate goal for this trip is to spend a night at Camp 3 at about 7,000 meters. When they head for the summit they will sleep on oxygen at Camp 3 and be on oxygen from there on up. But for this trip they will try to spend the night without supplemental oxygen to force their bodies to acclimatize to the altitude as much as possible. All in all it will be a miserable night but will help them later on.

Meanwhile, some of our sherpas will begin sleeping at Camp 2 to be in position to begin carrying loads up to the South Col. They will be taking tents, food, and bottles of oxygen up to Camp 4 in preparation for our future summit attempt.

Ellie Henke
Base Camp Manager