Expedition Dispatches
Satellite phone updates from the 1998 American Everest Expedition


Berg
Plans For Moving Up The Mountain
Thursday, April 16, 1998 — Base Camp (17,500')

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Camp I (19,500')
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(photo: Corfield)
Good Morning Mountain Zone, this is Wally Berg calling you the morning of April 16th. It's been a day or so since I've talked to you, so I thought I should update you. As you all know, today is the Sherpa rest day after their first three initial carries through the icefall to Camp I and in some instances to Camp II. A beautiful, sunny day, the wind seems to finally have stopped both above basecamp and here at basecamp, so we're enjoying our rest day.

We got an email from Bradford Washburn who, with his wife Barbara, are with our dear friends, Leslie and Barbara Buckland in Manhattan this week. Branford was asking me for the expedition plan. In his mind, I keep talking about the Sherpas and this and that, but his mind is on "how are you moving up the mountain?" In response to Brad, and because I'm assuming that many Mountain Zone readers are interested as well, I'm going to give you, quickly, the plan for the next stage of the expedition.

The Sherpas have successfully completed their first three carries and are taking a rest day. Then they will carry for three more successive days which begins tomorrow. Also tomorrow, Eric Simonson and Greg Wilson will move up and establish our Camp I (19,500') and spend the night there; first night on the mountain for any of the climbing team.

They plan to spend two nights at Camp I, and their second night — that will be Sunday — they will be joined by Charles Corfield and myself. On Monday, as a four person climbing team, the western climbers will move together to Camp II (21,000'). As the leader, I'm going to ask that we spend, as a team, three night in Camp II, and that will give Simonson and Wilson a total of five nights in the Western Cwm, and it'll give Charles and I four. That is always adjusted to how people are doing. Certainly, if someone is not doing well, becomes sick, or doesn't seem to be acclimatizing properly, they'll descend. If we are up there, and we feel like we can benefit from staying longer in Camp II, we will do so.

The two Camp II cooks will move up tomorrow and begin establishing Camp II which we use effectively, as you know, as an advance basecamp on the South Col route on Everest. We'll have a radio base station up there. We'll have a large Sherpa cooking and eating tent and a small tent that we'll use for storage as well as a lot of sleeping tents for Sherpas and staff. At times we'll probably have thirteen climbing Sherpas and four climbing members as well as two Camp II cooks up there at one time. So, it is going to be quite a major operations post for our expedition.

Wally Berg, Expedition Leader

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