Any news?

Phil & I were going to go down to Gorak Shep this morning but were told that there might be some news from David re our summit bid so decided to hold fire. There's a new weather report in around mid day so we might learn something after lunch.

Apparently there is a Chilean team who are going for the summit in the next few days without the fixed lines being in place. There are also a few teams who are hoping to literally follow the Sherpa fixing team to the summit (although as far as I know no date has yet been set for this).

So whilst we are waiting for an update a couple of people have asked me about the differences between the two routes, north and south and the two companies.

Firstly on my return I plan to do a side by side comparison of the two routes and also on both companies, Jagged Globe and Adventure Peaks. Obviously this will only reflect my own personal circumstances and observations.

For now though let me very briefly say that despite the dangers of the icefall I've enjoyed the South side route more. How much of this is due to me not being ill (touch wood) or because aesthetically I think it is a nicer route, I'm not sure.

As for the two companies, perhaps it's best summed up by pinching the M & S food slogan for Jagged Globe: 'simply better'. So whilst they may be that bit more expensive, in my experience, you do get what you pay for.

For instance just taking one example: our base camp tents here are larger and a better make (MSR as opposed to Quark). The whole of the ground sheet area has been lined with 5mm foam to keep the cold at bay. As opposed to a cheap foam mattress that offers very little in the way of insulation I've been sleeping on anluxurious brand new Exped insulated mattress that's about 12cm thick and very comfortable. This has then covered with a separate fleece blanket. Finally and it's often the smallest of things that make a big  impression (but that's enough about me!) we've each got a Black Diamond lantern for illuminating our tents at night which gives a much better light than our head torches. All of the above just make staying at BC that much more comfortable.

Back to the latest news. David has said there's s 50:50 chance of us going up to Camp two the day after tomorrow. It all depends on the weather forecast for the 20th. At present it could go either way. 

Phil approaching Gorak Shep

Phil and I decided to come down to Gorak Shep this afternoon and were surprised to pass so many trekking groups. We've taken the opportunity to catch up with some emails.

That's it for today. Cheers Ian

Shower time

If you've been looking at my Tweets you'll know that I've been down to Gorak Shep this morning along with Philip and Nick.

Hopefully I got around to answering most emails/tweets and Facebook.

We got back here to BC in one hour and seven minutes which I think is eight minutes faster than last time which is encouraging. Will we get it down to one hour?

I've been on three trips to the Himalaya and I'm pleased to say that JG have the best shower system I've come across.

They have a two compartent shower tent, one side for you to change in complete with canvas stool to sit on whilst you dry your feet and the other side is for showering complete with non slip matting - health and safety even extends to Nepal.

Ok so what do you use as a shower? Well this is the really clever yet oh so simple solution - a Hozelock Porta Shower. This is essentially what you would normally fill with insecticide and spray your roses with to get rid of black fly.

Here's a picture of Adam, our great Base Camp manager and chef (possibly the hardest working person here) demonstrating its use (obviously outside of the shower tent). 

Now ladies do you think he could be Mr May for an expedition calendar?

Back to the Porta Shower: this holds 7 litres of liquid, in our case hot water although I do wonder whether after a week of not washing something stronger might not be more appropriate. Say something just to take the top layer of skin off!

Like you insecticide sprayer you just pump it up and the small shower rose provides an excellent shower. Ok it's not a 'deluge' but it is surprisingly effective.

This got me thinking, firstly Caroline my wife always showers. We have a power shower which I'm convinced uses more water than a bath. Now as we are on a water meter one of these Porta Showers could be a great water saver (I'll even offer to pump it up as I know it's going to be a difficult sell!). Please don't tell her but I think it will be a great Christmas present.

So often in life one thing leads to another and every so often you have a eureka moment.

Well I had one last night. I've worked out how to cheaply and effectively solve the water shortage crisis in Eastern and Southern England. I appreciate that the UK has just had its wettest April on record but it may not be enough to stave off drought restrictions.

This morning I sent an email to the Prime Ministers Office from my management company:

Water And Natural Kinetic Energy Resources, outlying my plans.

I do a bit on wave energy too.

Every household in the affected areas should be issued with a Porta Shower at the taxpayers expense. I suggested a suitable photo opportunity might be Vince Cable in an Edwardian bathing costume and hat being showered outside the Houses of Parliament.

I've done my research: a management consultant will charge at least 10% (Heather what would Pwc charge?) - ok then 15%. Now I checked on Amazon this morning and they retail for £25. I'm sure Hozelock would give the Government a better volume discount than the 9% which is what Amazon are offering, say nearer a third. Also I'm pretty sure Hozelock are a UK company and this could single handedly help to reverse the recession.

So say their are 45 million households in the UK, of these at least 50% are in the affected areas (sorry Scotland and Wales but these areas are fairly sparsely populated). So 22.5 million times say £15 per Porta Shower equals a contract worth £337.5 million. Add my management consultancy fee of £50.6 million and the whole water crisis is averted at a cost of circa £390 million.

This in terms of Government spending is a proverbial 'drop in the ocean ' if you'll excuse the pun. No need to build new canals, ship water by road from Scotland. This is the green solution!

Ok, so the last seven paragraphs have been a bit of fun. Even all the way over here I can hear you scream 'the sooner that boy gets back up the hill the better!!!'

A quick trip down to Gorak Shep & more on Friday's avalanche

Well after possibly one of the best nights sleep at BC (all of the team commented on how well they had slept) I decided that after some washing I'd pop down (I like using the word 'pop' because three weeks ago I couldn't have thought of a more unsuitable word!) to Gorak Shep to catch up on emails etc.


David said a couple of interesting things at breakfast: firstly, that approximately 30 climbers have returned home so far having either decided that Everest is not for them or they have been medically evacuated. So that's around 8-10% of the climbers here. Secondly, that the icefall appears to be much more unstable this year (just my luck). Apparently in previous years the route has only had to changed two or three times because of avalanche. This year it seems to be an almost daily occurrence.


Yesterday three or four of us thought about going down to Gorak Shep today but come this morning it was only me (is it something I said - I've not even told my 'high protein lozenge joke for the Khumbu cough yet'!). I have to be honest and say after five weeks, which incidentally means we are half way through the expedition, it was really nice just to have some time to myself outside of the confines of my tent (now I'm starting to make it sound like a prison cell).


I was able to really enjoy the walk down, going at my own pace, taking the scenery in and lost in a world of my own thoughts. Sadly I didn't have my camera with me as I saw a couple of Blackbird and Thrush sized birds with really beautiful red and multi coloured plumage.


Now this is going to sound awful but it was quite entertaining to see trekkers struggling up the trail hunched over their walking poles and not having the energy to say hello or to even raise a smile! Mind you I'm sure that's what we looked like three weeks ago and no doubt will look like on our way up to camp three. Time wise up and down was an hour and a quarter, virtually the same as last time, but it felt easier so hopefully there are a few more red blood cells inside me now.


Now on Friday at the bottom of the post you may recall that I mentioned an avalanche that swept across the width of the Western Cwm ( you may recall I've self imposed a 48 hour embargo on bad/ potentially bad news).


On Friday we were walking up to the Bergschund below the Lhotse face when at around ten am we heard the typical sound of an avalanche off behind to our right. Turning around we could see an avalanche cascading like a large waterfall down the side of Nuptse, probably two thousand feet above the Western Cwm. We all watched mesmerised by its size only to see what now looked like a cloud of snow and ice travel across the entire width of the valley and up the other side by about 500 feet, probably more. To give you an idea of time scale, whilst watching it travel down the side of Nuptse, I realised it was going to be huge and had time to take my rucksack off, get my camera out and catch a picture of it travelling up the other side!


Naturally we thought of people travelling up to Camp Two and hoped all were safe. What we hadn't appreciated was that the Lhotse team (led by Adele Pennington of JG) and her two team members had travelled up from BC that morning to Camp One. The avalanche was so huge that it took out nearly every tent at Camp One by virtue of the blast and snow debris. Thankfully Adele, Ron and Scott were all safe and well. They were outside the tents but were able to hunch down and shelter in the lee of them. It is a great testament to the strength of the Terra Nova heavyduty Hyperspace tents that Jagged Globe choose to use and how well our sherpa team have erected them just in case of such an eventuality that they survived unscathed except for one broken pole.


When we dropped off our walking poles yesterday all of the other tents were completely devastated including those just a few metres away from ours. Adele and her team wisely decided to carry on up to Camp Two and whilst obviously very shaken, we're able to enjoy a late lunch in the Camp Two mess tent.


As far as we know there were no fatalities however Pasang was returning to base camp that day and ended up rescuing a Sherpa who had been blown off a ladder into a crevace by the avalanche. It's thought he had some rib injuries and was helicoptered off to Kathmandu. Pasang never got his rest day in BC instead he returned to Camp Two only to find he had a squatter in his tent - either Ron or Scott!

Hello from Gorak Shep

Five of us decided this morning to walk down to Gorak Shep to get a good mobile signal and also for some gentle exercise. Not sure how we will enjoy the walk back up - probably two hours.

I've attached a photo: a picture of Yaks on the moraine. Hope it works.

Come back later as I shall be posting another post today 'Death on Everest' - not as bad as it sounds but I suspect it will be quite moving!
Bye for now
Ian

First view of the Lhoste face

This morning as part of our acclimatisation process we walked back out of BC and up to the approximate position of BC for those who choose to climb Pumori. I had the Spot2 set to 'track' so you might be able to see our route on the interactive map if it was working ok. The route up was very reminiscent of the route up the side of Pen yr Ole Wen directly from Ogwen Cottage in North Wales (apologies to all Welsh speakers if the spelling is incorrect!) but with only half the oxygen.

Our reward was an excellent view into the upper reaches of the Western Cwm and the sun glistening across the Lhotse face, an 850m wall of ice that has to be climbed to reach the South Col.
Actually the best bit for me was getting a 3G signal from Gorak Shep! Consequently I was able to check my emails and Twitter. Sadly not Facebook though (I know they'll be a number reading this saying 'that's no great loss').

Whilst it not possible to thank you all personally I do enjoy getting the messages so please keep them coming.

For those of you who have kindly posted comments on the blog there is a delay of approx 24 hours as all comments are moderated first. This is primarily to make sure my brothers don't post anything inappropriate! We got back down to BC for lunch and the afternoon has followed its typical (thankfully) lazy pattern.

Well it's been almost three weeks since we left the uk and our beards are coming along nicely. Sadly despite my mother's genes I don't think I'll win best beard of the trip though - David had a head start! (I can afford to be a bit cheeky at Mum's expense as at her age she will have forgotten by the time I get home!!).

Looking forward to tomorrow as after our usual play in the icefall in the morning I'm hoping to meet up with my friend Jeremy who is also out here in Nepal hoping to climb Island Peak.

Now I wonder what film it will be tonight? (don't worry Heather, Top Gun is there waiting to be seen). Last night it was a knock off copy of the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo with Daniel Craig. A couple of the guys found it quite hard to follow but it helps if you've read the book (or trilogy). Best bit for me though is that it means I won't have to take Caroline to see it - a few bob saved! Actually I've already been served with yellow card for some of my observations (humour). She's threatened to change the door locks.
Ah well bye from EBC. Ps yet another avalanche has descended whilst I was checking the above.

Lobuche to Gorak Shep

Well after almost 12 days of trekking and gradual acclimatisation we are due to arrive at Base Camp tomorrow. Everyone is looking forward to the next stage of this epic journey. Not least because we are all getting fed up of living out of a bag that has to be repacked most mornings! 

 We woke this morning to 10 cm of snow on the ground and thick cloud. We certainly couldn't have done yesterday's walk in today's weather. 

 The walk up to Gorak Shep is only a couple of hours or so although we made a detour to have a look at the Italian Research Station. This is a pyramid shaped building that was built 21 years ago by the Italian government originally to confirm the heights of Everest and K2. Nowadays it is available to any research institute wishing to undertake scientific research into any subject that would benefit from being undertaken in such a location. It's no longer limited to just high altitude research. 

The track up to Gorak Shep narrows after Lobuche and seemed even narrower in the snow as we made way for the numerous porters and yaks making their way to EBC. There's no doubting the popularity of this route. 

Today's ascent was only a couple of hundred metres and it was nice to arrive at our lodge in high spirits and with relative ease compared to our previous two days. 

Things only got better when Phil proudly shouted out ' my dongle is working!'. Not to be confused with an anatomical euphemism those of the IT generation will know this meant Ncell had repaired the mobile mast. Once again we had an Internet connection!