Everest Base Camp

Base Camp is something of an anticlimax when we arrive on the plateau. It’s a grey, barren, dusty, rock strewn, narrow plain that finishes where the moraine of the Rongbuk glacier begins. The wind is blowing hard, making me feel very cold despite wearing two shirts, a thick windstopper and a waterproof jacket. In areas that are sheltered from the cruel wind, it is very pleasant and, within the protection of the mess tent, it is positively Mediterranean.

There are six other climbing teams at camp with us: A very large Chinese group, an Indian group, Swiss, Swedish and Russian groups spread about base camp that together number about 200 climbers. There is till plenty of space for more but, at this stage of the proceedings, it’s unlikely that any other summit teams will arrive.

Our group is small. There are three people going for the summit; Jamie (the expedition leader), Tom and Andrew, all of whom have been here for one month already , getting their bodies used to the altitude and the cold. We have four of us going for the North Col (7,010 metres/ 23,000 feet) – myself, Debbie, Jo and Mike – and three going to Advance Base Camp (6,400 metres/21,000 feet) – Hugh, Kathleen and Jenna.
Hotel living is now very firmly behind us. Debbie and I are offered a tent each but we have opted to reside in one. It’s not very big. By the time the two of us plus our kit is shoe horned inside there isn’t an inch of spare space. We are going to have to be very disciplined and, I have been warned, in no uncertain terms, that this arrangement is not going to suit Debbie but she is determined we will stay together. It’s a recipe for domestic disaster. But we’ll manage somehow!

Our promised western lunch arrived. Tuna burgers, chips and baked beans. Top stuff!! Even Debbie got stuck into some form of veggie burger, leaving her plate empty for the first time for days. If this is going to be the standard of food we will be happy bunnies indeed!

We spent the afternoon sorting out our stuff, trying to find ways to maximise the small floor space in our tent. The most annoying aspect of it was that the dust managed to find its way into the tent no matter what we did to try to quarantine our interior.

When we got fed up, we went off for a walk around Base Camp, coming across the plaque to Mallory and Irvine who, in 1924, may have been the first people to climb Everest but both died on their descent and their camera has never been found. Whether or not they reached the summit remains a mystery.

What isn’t a mystery is the routine in Base Camp that revolves around mealtimes. Breakfast is at 0800 because that is around 30 minutes after the time that the sun hits the tents and drives the temperature from somewhere below zero to, maybe, 10 or 12 centigrade (inside the tent) in the space of half an hour. We get fed porridge followed by omelette, some homemade bread that is quite sweet with a choice of jams, honey or peanut butter. Instant coffee and various different teas are available to wash everything down.
Lunch is usually a light meal of beans, chips and vegetables that includes some kind of fish like tuna or sardines, or meat like spam. It gets served around 1230 – 1.00pm and woe betide any of us being late! From the timing point of view, not so different from being at home.

Dinner comes at 6.30 sharp and is a grand meal of 3 courses: soup (of which I usually try to have a second helping because it’s a good and simple way to take on essential fluids), followed by a main course similar to lunch, and a pudding that can be anything a male Tibetan mind can conjure up – normally not a taste sensation previously encountered, but not bad nonetheless. It was all fairly basic stuff that, I’m afraid, became rather monotonous, more so for the vegetarian Debbie and she would often resort to eating from our cache of cereal bars and chocolate.

Mealtimes also reinforce the camp hygiene protocol. To normal people it would seem very anal but to mountaineers it’s as an essential part of everyday life as food itself. Germs in camp can obliterate ambitions because, at altitude, it is almost impossible to shake off simple viruses such as a cold never mind something worse. Any illness becomes quickly debilitating.

As soon as we enter the mess tent for the very first time, we get a lecture from Andrew, who wants to summit Everest without oxygen and who isn’t best pleased to find himself sharing meals or life in Base Camp with a bunch of trekkers:
“Let me run through the hygiene rules,” he says, “First, you will always wash your hands outside the mess tent using the Dettol hand wash. Don’t dry your hands on the towel because that could have germs on it. Then you will use some liquid hand sanitizer.” He pauses to ensure we are listening attentively.
“Second, when you take the top off the hot water thermos, never place it wet side down on the table because that could pick up germs.”
The lecture continued covering the correct use of utensils, how to remove the lid from pots, how not to sneeze or cough and how to ensure that we used only one metal cup for hot drinks. In case we didn’t appreciate the seriousness of his remarks, he wouldn’t eat from a plate or a bowl or have a drink from a cup that any of us had touched. Sitting at the head at the far end of the table always, he would stretch past all of us to take his food directly from the kitchen staff. It was with general relief all round when he departed for a five day acclimatisation climb to the camp at 7,900 metres (26,000 feet) and we would cross paths again only briefly. However, his lecture was important because many people had invested a large amount of their lives, time and money to realise their Everest ambitions and they don’t want to have it all evaporate by contracting any kind of illness. And in this extreme environment a small infection is a big deal.

In fact, one of our group, Hugh, contracted a chest infection that couldn’t be shifted by antibiotics and could only be cured by descending to a lower altitude. His journey eventually ended here.

On both sides of the mountain, everybody works on Nepali time even though we, on the North side, are in Tibet and should be on Chinese time. This is so that everyone on Everest is on the same time. But Nepali time is one of those products of a committee solely constituted of morons. It is 4hours 45 minutes ahead of the UK, 15 minutes different from neighbouring India (its proximity to Chinese time is less of an issue because the whole of China operates Beijing time, the Chinese capital that is 2,500 miles north eastwards). Thus no one ever knows the time anywhere else in the world and it’s no good looking at the line of clocks in hotel reception because they run off electricity – something that Nepal enjoys but occasionally.

The camp toilet is another idiosyncrasy. It is reserved for number twos only. So we need to have a pee outside at a place of our choosing beforehand. If a pee and poo cannot be completed separately, then we are required to miss the poo receptacle. This is because the poo is carried own the mountain on a lucky Yak to be disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner and pee makes the entire exercise heavier and more difficult.

Of course, peeing outside in public is no big deal for a chap and can be an enjoyable pastime if you happen to be French but it isn’t the kind of exhibitionist activity in which girls (the ones I know anyway) like to indulge. So, in deference to the females in our group, a ladies pee tent was erected to provide essential screening whilst they passed water into the ground like the rest of us. Debbie found the whole experience a typically male arrangement, having to pee in one tent and then move 50 yards to the poo tent. However, the girls didn’t realise at the time what a luxury was this arrangement because, upon our return to base camp, having climbed up the mountain, all that was left of the ladies pee tent was a neat square of stones and they had to pee in the open like everyone else.

Number twos for everyone involved hitting the interior of a one metre high plastic tub. This necessitated climbing rocks that wedged the tub in place and then squatting in the required position to bomb the target successfully. Squatting at altitude with bad knees is a breathtakingly demanding exercise and not one to be undertaken lightly or unnecessarily. It all serves to underline that life on Everest doesn’t suit everyone. In fact, faced with the disagreeable experience, Debbie’s rear end shut up shop completely.
Washing and general cleanliness has similarly been left behind (hands excepted). We try to get a bowl of hot water once a day which Debbie and I share for washing faces and armpits. Other areas get a rub down with a wet wipe. Hair washing doesn’t happen. Still, it’s only for a few weeks and it’s like reliving my youth! In any case, washing has to be undertaken in whatever temperature exists at the time. Often the morning sun will make body washing in the tent a relatively pleasant affair but, in the afternoon cloud and chill wind, we have to hope that water on our bodies dries before it freezes.

The wind at camp is pretty much ever present. A nil wind is anything less than 5 knots (about 6mph/9kph) and it can blow at anything up to 40mph (60kph). First and foremost, even a low wind penetrates my entire clothing – hard shell rain top worn over a soft shell windstopper with two shirts underneath. The only clothing items it has so far failed to sack are my down jacket worn over a fleece with a couple of base layers hugging my body. But I try to keep this stuff for night-time (i.e. after 6.00pm) when the temperature plummets below zero.

The wind is always chilling. It’s as if it has come straight from the arctic freezer in winter. At this altitude there is nothing to warm it. It sucks the moisture from skin, mouth, throat and lungs requiring constant rehydration. We have been advised to consume a minimum of 4 litres of water a day just to keep our bodies in balance. Despite this our lips crack and Debbie’s fingers begin to split.

However, the wind doesn’t stop there. It also drives dust everywhere. We try in vain to keep our tent a dust free zone but it’s a battle we cannot win. As I walk along, mouth open, lungs searching for oxygen, I am convinced I am filling up with the bloody stuff. I swear that when I don’t want to eat, it’s because my stomach is already full of dirty, dark grey rock dust whose nutritional value is a useless zero.
I wonder whether |I could pass it off as diet food. Commercially, it couldn’t fail: “Doctor Sven’s proprietary diet – eat my dust sucker!”
I may have to take up residence in a country where I can’t be sued (Outer Mongolia for example) but it would be a small price to pay for the zillions I would surely make.
However, if this doesn’t work, I have a back-up plan. This place is covered with rocks of all sizes and colours. It’s not possible to take two steps without sliding on them or walking on, over or around the stupid things. If I could only get them home, I would make a fortune selling them to garden Centres. And I could charge a premium because of their genuine (certified, of course) Everest origin. What could go wrong?

It’s not as if there is a finite supply. This entire area is one huge rocky wasteland that covers thousands of square miles. Much of the surrounding hillside is made of soft rock that is constantly being eroded (mainly by the wind!) and landslides refresh the passes every day. The harder rocks that remain, stand like tall sentries guarding the narrow valleys below. Walking around its heads down looking at where we are about to plant our feet, hoping we will tread on something solid, rather than looking up to enjoy the views of the great peaks of the Himalayas. I feel that if I were to cart off every rock I could find, I would only receive the grateful thanks of thousands of climbers who are saved the constant threat of a turned ankle.

Rock walking is an everyday experience as we go for walks before lunch to help our bodies adjust to living and working at an altitude of 5,200 metes / 17,000 feet where the oxygen in the air is 50% of that at sea level. This means that the heart and lungs have to work twice as hard to achieve the same result and there is a lot of huffing and puffing involved as it doesn’t take very much activity to become breathless. Climbs that normally we wouldn’t think twice about when we are at home require full concentration, a spiralling heart rate and, through an open mouth, the lungs suck in great volumes of air. I can’t say it’s great fun but coping with living and working physically at altitude is what this trip is all about.
In the afternoons, we are required to practice walking about on ice, some of it quite steep, in hard plastic climbing boots and crampons. This is reasonably straightforward provided we use various basic techniques.

A lot more complicated is having to master the requirements of abseiling. No one had mentioned that we needed to be able to do this. It was not mentioned on the expedition company’s web site, it was not mentioned in two phone calls with the expedition leader or, in fact, during a dinner with him. Now it was a critical part of basic climbing technique to get up and down the North Col. If we had known, there are plenty of places close to home that we could have learnt how to do it and it certainly wasn’t ideal having to go through a crash course at the last minute. Unfortunately, it was another indication of the poor organisation behind our expedition (no one got a kit list until 2 days before the expedition left Kathmandu) – we just had to hope that the approach to safety was more thorough! Anyway, we now had to climb up fixed ropes using a Jumar (a contraption that can be slid along a rope and then locks allowing us to pull ourselves up if necessary) and then abseil down again. It’s quite fun!

However, our expedition leader, Jamie, isn’t impressed by our efforts at either learning to climb or trekking. I am beginning to conclude that he doesn’t think Debbie and I should attempt the North Col as he doesn’t miss an opportunity to belittle our efforts or put us down generally. There have been several occasions when we have had to bite our tongues for fear of having a full blown argument in front of everyone else. It has taken the shine off what has otherwise been an exciting experience (I can’t, in all honesty, report that Base Camp is an enjoyable experience) and we are both looking forward to moving on up the mountain.

Everest Base Camp
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