Firat Eren

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

This is the Alpine Ascents Everest Expedition calling in from Camp 3. We just drug our weary little legs in here a little while ago. We’re just firing up the stoves and looking forward to getting rehydrated. Firat has made a beautiful bed out of our tent palace here. We’re about half way up the Lhotse face with a view that goes on for miles when the clouds aren’t around. It’s been snowing for the last hour or so, but everyone is very happy to be here. We have a little coughing going on in the group, but for the most part I’m pretty impressed with how everyone pulled in here. There have been no major problems, which just goes to show that our acclimatization program is hard to beat. We’ve been doing everything right, so we’ll see how we sleep tonight.

The whole reason for being here at 7,000 meters, perched on the hillside, is to acclimatize. We don’t anticipate that it’s going to be an easy night, but it is going to stress our systems, and that will hopefully encourage us to form more red blood cells and to adapt in many ways to the high altitude rigors that are in the days to come before we go to Camp 4 and then on to the summit.

We also must thank our splendid Sherpa team. They have chopped out our tent platforms – there are six tents up here. They carried all of our sleeping gear up here as well, so they did a yeoman’s duty today. Our tents are relatively level, which is impressive seeing as how this is a blue ice glacier. They chopped them out of about a 40 degree angle, which is predominant throughout the Lhotse Face. They found a low angle part of it and put up the tents in two tiers, sort of like terraces for farming rice.

We hope everyone has a wonderful evening, sleep well, and think of us in the morning when you wake up. I’m sure we’ll be feeling the altitude, so we just want to share our joy with everyone. Ciao for now and have a good night.

Vern Tejas at Camp 3