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Wally Berg |
Helicopters In Base Camp And Dust on Crust
Sunday, April 26, 1998 — Base Camp (17,500')
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Hi Mountain Zone, it's Wally Berg calling you later the same morning of the last call, April 26th. It's amazing what a few hours difference can make in the outlook and appearance here at base camp. The sun came out after that very gray opening to the day. The result was that Charles held court once again, more at length today, on the use of various pieces of equipment with his attentive Sherpa audience out here in the sunny moraine near our dinning tent. Eric joined in today and we had a quite a productive morning handling Trimble GPS equipment. Handling specifically today, hand drills from Pica Mountaineering and Hurricane Mountaineering as well which will be back up for our frontline plan this year, which is to use the wall drills which the engineers at Black & Decker have developed and modified for us. We think we have the power figured out with their help to actually use power drills on our project on the summit this year. We'll see about that, but the work that Charles and Eric did today with the Sherpas, with the backup hand drills, went very, well and it was entertaining and useful — both in a nice, sunny base camp.
We had a helicopter come in today too, which last year, as you probably remember if you were watching the events on Everest, it was a commonplace, virtually a daily occurrence. This year it had not happened yet. We were surprised to hear it, it was one of the French Alouette Military helicopters that Nepal owns. They own two, they used to own two, but now they only have one because Colonel KC Madden, who was the hero of, you'll remember, the evacuation from the Western Cwm in 1996 with a French Alouette helicopter, actually tipped one of them over just before we left base camp last year, in the 1997 season. It probably was a good thing it was KC because he had earned such points for his dramatic rescue the year before, I suppose a little slack was due him in that mistake in 1997. But that helicopter, that French Alouette helicopter, looked drab of course being a Nepalese Army with some red painting it, red Nepalese flag. It was carried out by porters so that the Nepalese government could collect on the insurance.
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Maddan KC breathes oxygen in base camp last year
[click to zoom]
(photo: Bruton)
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I think today, whatever Captain was up there, whatever pilot up there, was going to be a little more cautious. He circled several times, turns out — we found out via radio transmission from the Himalayan Rescue Association Clinic later — that he was bringing food in that had been ordered by the Iranian team. He determined that there was no suitable landing pad, so he didn't want to land, and he flew the Iranian's food delivery down to Gorak Shep where they had to send porters down to go get it — which is actually just fine with me. If we need to do a serious rescue out of base camp this year, we can get a heli-pad constructed in no time, but the daily traffic is not something that I was very pleased with last year, and it is something we can do without at Everest base camp.
So, the Iranians will get their food the last section of its journey via porter from Gorak Shep, and who knows, maybe with a little bit of luck, no rescues or evacuations will be necessary, and we won't even see a helicopter land at Everest base camp this season. That would be fine with me, to tell you the truth.
OK, we'll continue to stay in touch with you guys as time goes on. The new snow on the Lhotse face from the last couple of days has resulted in a situation of "dust on crust" you might call it. A little bit of slightly wet, non-wind transported snow laid onto very hard blue ice on the Lhotse face this year that has made climbing up there less than appealing. The general consensus, Andy Lapkiss (sp?), a good friend of mine from three season on Everest, '89, '90 and '93, who is working as a guide on Lhotse for a British team this year, came down today through the Icefall and had a cup of tea at our camp before he went on to his camp here at base and told us that the consensus was to let that stuff settle out a day or two, and then go up and continue work on the Lhotse face.
I'm going to have a meeting with probably some of the other players here at base camp, some of the other teams, and perhaps with our Sherpas and we'll try to figure out whether we should make a push to plug in, continue the route on the Lhotse face while Andy and his guys take a rest, or whether we'll all just let it settle for a couple days. We'll make that decision and keep you informed.
It is interesting to note, as many of you will remember, I believe it was one year ago yesterday that Apa, my good friend Apa Sherpa, Anatoli [Boukreev] and some of the Indonesian team actually went to the summit. So we are in a very different situation this year partly because of the conditions and probably partly because of the attitude and approach of the teams here. In some years, the first summit dates in late April, are definitely going to pass with us still working on the Lhotse face. Not to worry on any of our part, we feel that these early summit attempts would be the 10 to 12th of May, which by the way, is a full moon. And of course, we're very prepared to stay and to see this through until after May 20th, knowing that often, very, very good summit days are possible after May 20th. So, we'll keep you posted on the strategy and developments as we push the route up. That's all from base camp for today.
— Wally Berg, Expedition Leader
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