Seventh Update from Xtreme Everest
NOTE: In this dispatch, the climbers return to altitude in their attempt to reach the summit of Everest, as part of the Caudwell Xtreme Everest project. The expedition is being covered by MacGillivray Freeman Films for their forthcoming "Return to Everest 3D" IMAX release.
You’d think after two months at base camp the routine would be getting old for the researchers of the Xtreme Everest Expedition. Up an hour before daybreak to fill out the symptoms diary, on to the lab for testing, finally a much-coveted cup of black tea just before the Sherpas’ gong announces breakfast.
But this past week, things have been picking up. The hours just after dawn have been animated by a certain anticipation, and from some camps arise the sounds of success, as communications director Kay Mitchell tells us. “When you wake up in the morning you sometimes hear cheers coming from different places in Base Camp, and you know that someone else has summitted.” For most teams camped out at the head of the Khumbu Glacier, this is the whole point – reaching the 29,035-foot summit of Everest.
This has been a period of relatively clear and stable weather, not uncommon this time of year in the Himalaya, the perfect window of opportunity to reach the summit. Teams from both the North Base Camp in Tibet and the South Base Camp in Nepal are almost daily making their way up the final mile of elevation to stand on the world’s highest peak. While there have been a handful of casualties, thus far the calamitous tragedy of 1996 has been avoided, when 8 commercial climbers and guides perished on one day.
For the climbing team of Xtreme Everest, the early success of others is welcome news. “The more people that get to the top before us, the fewer people we have to fight at the ropes when we make our attempt. If lots of people get up and get back down again now, that frees the route for us next week, which is good.”
Research Takes Precedence
The high altitude research team that Xtreme Everest has assembled for the upper camps is back in place, after a week of “fattening up” at Dengboche. Expedition leader Dr. Mike Grocott, and climbing team leader Dr. Sundeep Dhillon, are joined by a dozen other physicians (and at least as many Sherpas) to conduct research in low oxygen at the two high camps – Camp Two, at the “Eli Lilly Research Lab” (the labs have been named after key sponsors), and the highest lab, the “Rolex Institute Laboratory” at Camp Four, the South Col. Their subjects? Themselves.
The plan is for the research team to complete their research at the South Col (26,000 feet) and retreat to Camp Two, then mount the summit attempt from there. However, the South Col is traditionally the launch point for the early morning climb to the summit, and it may prove tempting to head for the top early – if health is good, if the weather is good, if conditions are right. They will even do arterial blood sampling and other tests at the summit – if they make it that far.
With them at the upper camps is mountain photographer Michael Brown of the MacGillivray Freeman Films team, who has already climbed to the top four times on earlier expeditons; his colleague Rick Ryan remains below to film the scene at Base Camp during the summit ascent. The rest of the IMAX film crew left the region last week, trekking back down to Lukla and flying out of the country from Kathmandu. They will return to Nepal next year with a full film crew to complete their shot list of colorful and dramatic locations for the 2009 release of Return to Everest 3D.
Thoughts of Home
But despite the impending summit attempts, going home is a subject that becomes increasingly common in the thoughts if not the conversation of the 40-some researchers in the Xtreme Everest base camp.
“I have to say I am looking forward to the end,” Kay admits. “It’s been an absolutely amazing experience, but it’s an extreme environment, and you do get tired. I mean I do eat quite well, but you just never feel 100 percent.”
The physical stress of life at nearly 18,000 feet has been leavened by the constant arrival of “new blood,” so to speak – the 13 trek groups that have shown up with regularity at about two per week to take part in the research. “It’s great to a new group come in every few days to inject new life. And they’re awesome, they really are awesome -- it’s a struggle to get to base camp, and they’ve all put in a huge amount of effort. We’re extremely grateful for it.”
Meanwhile the research continues as the final trek groups arrive. The last of the volunteer trekkers has left Kathmandu on their way to base camp, and one by one the lab staffs at Kathmandu, Namche and Periche will be packing up their equipment and zipping up their results for evaluation back at the University of London. And then they will set off on the trekker’s trail up the Khumbu Valley, headed at last for Everest Base Camp themselves.
What will the researchers at Base Camp do, once the last of the trek groups leaves, once the mountain is climbed, once the research is over? “Most of the lab staff is going off to climb Island Peak,” Kay says, “which will be a good reward for all their hard work. They’re getting quite excited about that, and on their days off they go off and do lots of ice climbing practice.”
A sooner goal is the party at base camp, once all the research teams are reunited. “It’ll be great, a big reunion.” And hopefully, a celebration of summit success as well.
Stay tuned for breaking news from the Xtreme Everest Expedition, coming soon!
You’d think after two months at base camp the routine would be getting old for the researchers of the Xtreme Everest Expedition. Up an hour before daybreak to fill out the symptoms diary, on to the lab for testing, finally a much-coveted cup of black tea just before the Sherpas’ gong announces breakfast.
But this past week, things have been picking up. The hours just after dawn have been animated by a certain anticipation, and from some camps arise the sounds of success, as communications director Kay Mitchell tells us. “When you wake up in the morning you sometimes hear cheers coming from different places in Base Camp, and you know that someone else has summitted.” For most teams camped out at the head of the Khumbu Glacier, this is the whole point – reaching the 29,035-foot summit of Everest.This has been a period of relatively clear and stable weather, not uncommon this time of year in the Himalaya, the perfect window of opportunity to reach the summit. Teams from both the North Base Camp in Tibet and the South Base Camp in Nepal are almost daily making their way up the final mile of elevation to stand on the world’s highest peak. While there have been a handful of casualties, thus far the calamitous tragedy of 1996 has been avoided, when 8 commercial climbers and guides perished on one day.
For the climbing team of Xtreme Everest, the early success of others is welcome news. “The more people that get to the top before us, the fewer people we have to fight at the ropes when we make our attempt. If lots of people get up and get back down again now, that frees the route for us next week, which is good.”
Research Takes Precedence
The high altitude research team that Xtreme Everest has assembled for the upper camps is back in place, after a week of “fattening up” at Dengboche. Expedition leader Dr. Mike Grocott, and climbing team leader Dr. Sundeep Dhillon, are joined by a dozen other physicians (and at least as many Sherpas) to conduct research in low oxygen at the two high camps – Camp Two, at the “Eli Lilly Research Lab” (the labs have been named after key sponsors), and the highest lab, the “Rolex Institute Laboratory” at Camp Four, the South Col. Their subjects? Themselves.
The plan is for the research team to complete their research at the South Col (26,000 feet) and retreat to Camp Two, then mount the summit attempt from there. However, the South Col is traditionally the launch point for the early morning climb to the summit, and it may prove tempting to head for the top early – if health is good, if the weather is good, if conditions are right. They will even do arterial blood sampling and other tests at the summit – if they make it that far.With them at the upper camps is mountain photographer Michael Brown of the MacGillivray Freeman Films team, who has already climbed to the top four times on earlier expeditons; his colleague Rick Ryan remains below to film the scene at Base Camp during the summit ascent. The rest of the IMAX film crew left the region last week, trekking back down to Lukla and flying out of the country from Kathmandu. They will return to Nepal next year with a full film crew to complete their shot list of colorful and dramatic locations for the 2009 release of Return to Everest 3D.
Thoughts of Home
But despite the impending summit attempts, going home is a subject that becomes increasingly common in the thoughts if not the conversation of the 40-some researchers in the Xtreme Everest base camp.
“I have to say I am looking forward to the end,” Kay admits. “It’s been an absolutely amazing experience, but it’s an extreme environment, and you do get tired. I mean I do eat quite well, but you just never feel 100 percent.”
The physical stress of life at nearly 18,000 feet has been leavened by the constant arrival of “new blood,” so to speak – the 13 trek groups that have shown up with regularity at about two per week to take part in the research. “It’s great to a new group come in every few days to inject new life. And they’re awesome, they really are awesome -- it’s a struggle to get to base camp, and they’ve all put in a huge amount of effort. We’re extremely grateful for it.”
Meanwhile the research continues as the final trek groups arrive. The last of the volunteer trekkers has left Kathmandu on their way to base camp, and one by one the lab staffs at Kathmandu, Namche and Periche will be packing up their equipment and zipping up their results for evaluation back at the University of London. And then they will set off on the trekker’s trail up the Khumbu Valley, headed at last for Everest Base Camp themselves.
What will the researchers at Base Camp do, once the last of the trek groups leaves, once the mountain is climbed, once the research is over? “Most of the lab staff is going off to climb Island Peak,” Kay says, “which will be a good reward for all their hard work. They’re getting quite excited about that, and on their days off they go off and do lots of ice climbing practice.”
A sooner goal is the party at base camp, once all the research teams are reunited. “It’ll be great, a big reunion.” And hopefully, a celebration of summit success as well.
Stay tuned for breaking news from the Xtreme Everest Expedition, coming soon!
