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The Last Real Mattress
Lobuche - Thursday, April 13, 2000
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Hello Zoners this is Vern Tejas with Alpine Ascents' climb of Mount Everest 2000. Yesterday we left Dingboche quite early and made a leisurely stroll up the long moraines and finally arrived at Upper Lobuche. Lobuche is a wonderful spot if you have a hotel to stay in, which we do. The hotel is connected to the Italian Research Center, which was built here so that they can study the seismic and also the geology of the area.
It was quite nice to be able to spend some time indoors; it'll be our last chance for quite a while to have electricity and to listen to music and a real mattress, as Ellie says.
Today we got up and made a climb high above Upper Lobuche, where we could look down upon the Khumbu Glacier and it is a mighty glacier — huge moraines, lateral moraines spread down miles and miles down-valley. We could see blue and green ice sticking through where the rocks have slid off to the sides.
We're also able to view Base Camp, another day's hike from here. Tents and prayer flags were flapping in the wind.
It was a great acclimatization hike, and should help with our team's overall ability to handle the new altitude. Last night was a little rough. Several of us had headaches, and I was up many times watering the horse, if you will. Seems that being at altitude has a natural diuretic effect on us.
Now a question to you young ones out there: what is latitude and how can we use it to navigate? And for those of you interested in numbers I'd like to say, as expected, our oxygen saturation has dropped on the average, it is now 85 and our pulse rate has gone up, as anticipated. We are now at 71. It was clear and calm this morning, at 20 degrees Fahrenheit or -2 Celsius. We are now located at 5050 meters or 16,554 feet. And for those of you who are tracking us on a map, we're now at latitude north 27 degrees, 57.447 minutes and we're east longitude of 86 degrees, 48.788 minutes in Upper Lobuche.
Tomorrow we're planning on hiking up to Base Camp and setting up the camp that we're going to be hanging in for many, many a week. So stay tuned, and we'll talk to you later. Ciao for now.
— Vern Tejas, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent
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