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Thin Air in Our Lungs
Namche - Tuesday, April 4, 2000
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Good morning Mountain Zone this is Vern Tejas with Alpine Ascents Everest 2k Expedition. Yesterday it was a zoo at the airport. We went at 6 o'clock in the morning and unloaded all six tons of our gear and then we waited, and waited. It must have been around 1 o'clock in the afternoon before we finally got on our Soviet-built helicopter and loaded not only all of the team that has arrived so far, and all our gear in there, but also packed away our hopes of landing high on the mountain.
And so we did. An hour later we landed just above Namche Bazaar and unloaded the helicopter and felt that thin air in our lungs for the first time on the trip and boy was it fun.
The team is going to reunite today after the arrival of our last member. They're going to fly up in a helicopter as well and we should then be eight of us, all spending several days in Namche and the surrounding area trying to get acclimatized.
We are now at a little over 11,000 feet — or that would also be 3478 meters. So for the numbers today, for those people who are keeping track, we have temperature of 31 degrees Fahrenheit, or -0.5 degrees centigrade; wind speed is four miles an hour out of the northeast; we also have a windchill of -1 degrees C. We're at an altitude of 3490 meters and an altitude in feet of 11,381. We have a latitude of 27 degrees, 48 minutes and 262 hundredths. We're at the longitude of east 86 degrees, 42 minutes and 736 hundredths.
We're overlooking Namche Bazaar and we have average pulse rate from yesterday, for the group, of 66 and we have average oxygen saturation of 96. Now, for those young minds out there, what would be the formula you would use to change centigrade to Fahrenheit and vice versa? That's all of now. Vern signing off.
— Vern Tejas, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent
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