I left Lobuche this morning for the normally easy 4 hour hike to Base Camp.  The first few hours went fine but the last two I began to fade.  I had not been able to eat much in the previous days after my stomach issues and it was catching up with me.  The last hour into BC is over the glacier.  In this area it is like an endless stretch of sand dunes except they are dirt covered ice.  It must be how a gopher feels.  You reach the top of one and can see BC in the distance then back down in the trough.  Every time you top out your head tells you it has to be a hundred feet closer but your legs and eyes have a different opinion.  Very character building. 

Eventually we ran into one of our team mates out for a walk about who looked fit and strong.  I on the other hand looked, and felt, like something the yak dragged in.  Eventually my little yellow home away from home came into view and boy was it a welcome site.  I didn’t have to level a spot or pitch the tent.  Some kind soul had already done this for me.  Did I tell you how much I love these Sherpas?  All I had to do was throw my bag and some essentials for the night in and call it a day.  It is good to be settled.

Base Camp is an amazing place.  A month ago it was a totally uninhabited jumbled pile of ice and rock where a bird wouldn’t even land.  It will be that way again by mid June but now it is awash in multi-color Dacron and canvas.  There are tents everywhere you look.  Mostly sleeping tents but there are also mess tents, comm. tents, and the small 3×3 toilet tents.  There are puja poles and prayer flags mixed in with satellite dishes and radio antennas.  There are no sign ordinances here and half the tents are festooned with outfitter names, team names, countries and the ubiquitous cause.

It seems like to me everybody is climbing for something.  People are climbing for a cure for “fill in the blank”, or to stop global warming (which I could have used a little of last night) or my favorite “world peace”.  Anyone asks me what I am climbing for I tell the “I’m climbing for a cure for Narcissism”.  From the reaction I get maybe I should be climbing for a cure for people who take themselves too seriously.  Unfortunately that wouldn’t fit well on banner.  Actually I should have had a banner made.  I always have the great ideas.  Unfortunately they are never on time.

In all fairness not everyone is using some cause as a way to raise money to pay for their trip.  There are some very sincere people who have done a lot to raise consciousness about important issues.  Our own outfitter is actually putting up money to pay Sherpas to bring trash off the mountain.  I think they are paying 100 rupees (a little over a dollar) per kilo which in this country is pretty sporty.  I told some of the Sherpas I was going to be competing with them.  I know where an Italian helicopter crashed.  That’s heavy and more important for me -close!  I told them I had to raise money to pay my way home.  I don’t think they know how to take me.  They just give me that crazy uncle smile and go on.

Treasure hunting around here is a common rest day hobby.  Every year stuff that has been perfectly preserves finds its way to the bottom of the Khumbu Icefall and melts out.  I know people who have found tins from the failed Swedish 1952 expedition and stuff from the British 1953 expedition that finally conquered Everest.  Last year a Sherpa found an unaddressed letter that was from someone on the British expedition but never got mailed.  No surnames where used in the body but the hunt goes on for who may have accidentally dropped that letter in the snow 56 years ago.

BC is nature at her nosiest.  Often during the night the glacier which we are camped on will creak and groan under the titanic forces that are moving this river of ice toward India and the Ocean.  Although a little creepy that pales in comparison to the sudden release of stored energy that comes when gravity finally overcomes inertia and surface tension.  This takes two forms.  The first is rock fall.  Usually happening with the heating of the day you will here a crack and then more cracks and soon tons of rock and debris will slide down the slope until finally coming to rest at the base of the glacier.  The second and by far the more spectacular are the avalanches.  They often occur five or six times a day and after a while people don’t even go out to watch unless it sounds like a really big one.

I witnessed two in 2006 that were truly spectacular.  The first occurred on the South face of Nuptse.  The snow dust plume could be seen for miles away and probably went a 1,000 feet in the air.  The second was a massive slide that came down the side of Pumori to our south.  It was so large that the camp was air blasted and every south facing tent that was open got a coating of snow dust.  There was an expedition attempting Pumori at the time that had just retreated to base camp.  As I understand all their gear in camps I and II was destroyed and they soon, and wisely, packed for home.  Camp I on Everest was hit in 2004 with no loss of life and has now been moved to a safer location.

Life will take on a simpler rhythm now.  Climb and rest.  I will periodically pack my backpack for trips higher to acclimatize.  Eventually we may go back down valley for a few days to thicker air before our final summit push but for now this is not a bad place to be.