Expedition Dispatches
Satellite phone updates from the 1998 American Everest Expedition

Corfield

The Julia Child Test
Wednesday, May 6, 1998 — Base Camp (17,500')

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Sherpas practice for summit science
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Good Morning Mountain Zone, this is Charles, and it is Wednesday, May 6th, 1998. For many years on British radio there was a comedy program lead by luminaries such as Frank Muir and Dennis Norden and every week they would be given this challenge to work in some famous phrase or cliche into a shaggy dog story; I think I've found the equivalent today for Everest which is that you have to somehow work Julia Child into an expedition on Mount Everest.

Yesterday, we did another round of drilling practice with some of the Sherpas, particularly Dorjee and Kaja Nuru. We practiced with hand drills and electric drills to see how they would go particularly with the ¼" drill bits, and it soon became apparent that there were some similarities with the cooking show of many years ago. Julia Child set the electric mixer to whip up some egg whites while she did the same by hand and of course beat the electric mixer. While we were sitting down to lunch, Kaju Nuru and Dorjee practiced drilling a couple of holes with the hand drills and then mounting a stainless steel plate on a practice rock outside the dining tent. [Click to learn more about the science to be attempted.] And much to our considerable surprise, with hand drills, they were actually quicker than with electric drills. Just goes to show that Sherpa power should never be underrated.

So, next questions we have is do we want to take ten pounds of electric drilling equipment to the summit or an extra bottle of oxygen plus Kaja Nuru and Dorjee Sherpa? So there you are, Julia Child comes to Everest in the form of two Sherpas. Stay tuned for the next dispatch. Bye.

— Charles Corfield, Expedition Science Manager

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