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Sharing Stories In Pheriche
Pheriche - Wednesday, May 3, 2000

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Wally Berg
Berg
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Mountain Zone, this dispatch is coming from Pheriche again on the afternoon of the 3rd. We come here to Pheriche and I stay here three nights total on this trek because this is a spot that I associate with the expeditions I've been on over the years.

Here at the Himalayan Lodge, Ang Kati's place in Pheriche — it's been a home to us as we approached Base Camp on many of my expeditions. And you know when you show up here that you're in the shadow of Base Camp. People are going to be coming and going, word's going to be circulating about — about what's going on in a very direct manner.

A number of climbers are down here who are recuperating after having been as high as Camp III, including friends of ours — Todd Hoffman and John Leonard are down here.

So we're all meeting people who've been very recently on the mountain and we're hearing news about how things are going. Seems to me like sooner or later that South Col's got to get stocked. It sounds like things are on average a bit behind what would be the average schedule, but it also sounds like all the teams are in great spirits, have good plans and they're doing well. But the wind is blowing, the wind's been blowing down here in Pheriche all day and news...word that gets sent down from Base Camp is, "Don't bother coming back for a while because we're just holding tight."

So we and our trekking schedule are holding tight with our acclimatization. A group of us climbed up the ridge to about 16.5 today. Gary and a couple of Sherpas took a little shorter hike, went over to Dingboche, and myself and the real hard-core, acclimatization, rest-day crew sat around here and played cards and told stories and socialized with other trekkers and climbers and did the real serious rest-day activity. We didn't drift far from the Himalayan Lodge at all.

In particular, we enjoyed meeting John and Lynn Erickson from Fargo. They had been up on their way into Base Camp to visit their friend Paul, who's trying to climb Everest. They...neither of them quite made it due to the snow and weather that they've had up here the last few days, but it was fun meeting them and talking to trekkers who had very recently attempted exactly what we're going to do. Also a little humbling as the mountains usually are — seeing these fit, enthusiastic people who are trying to get to see their friend who were turned back.

So it's not a given that you're even going to make it Base Camp when you head up this way. The mountains are serious, you got to take care of yourself, stay humble, stay focused and that's just what we're going to do; acclimatization day's been a big part of that and of course tomorrow we move to Lobuche, up to the Pyramid, hope my reservations held as they did last time, and in fact we have those excellent rooms up there at 16,000 feet. I'll let you know whether we got our reservations, got our rooms and I'll let you know how we feel when we get to 16,000 feet, sometime tomorrow.

Wally Berg, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent

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