Expedition Dispatches
Satellite phone updates from the 1998 American Everest Expedition

Corfield

Fattening Up in Base Camp
Tuesday, May 5, 1998 — Base Camp (17,500')

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A Sherpa descends the Geneva Spur after a carry to the Col
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(photo: Lakpa Rita)

Good Morning Mountain Zone, this Charles at Everest base camp, Tuesday, 5th of May. Three of our members are down in base camp today that is Eric, Greg and Charles. We've come down from our Camp III acclimatization round. Wally should be joining us this morning, coming down through the Icefall now, I think. They're also doing the stocking carries up to the South Col. This is going extremely well and four of the Sherpas are completing the stocking of our camp up there. The remaining Sherpas have come down for a few days rest and two of them, Ang Pasang and Nima Tashi, who live in Thyangboche, and have indeed been able to walk home to visit their families, and we expect to see them again in a few days.

The next item on our agenda is packaging up those pieces of equipment which will go to the summit for the GPS survey and science project. Already, now that the MIT-Yale E3 expedition has come to base camp, they have prepared four weather stations, two of which we've taken up the mountain and one of which is going up to the South Col today. The weather stations will measure things like temperature and wind speed and basically provide simple meteorological data for us. This is something of a first here, being able to get almost real time weather data down at base camp. Let's see, the next few days we shall be preparing for our summit bid and eating, drinking, sleeping and getting a bit of weight back on and getting ourselves fit for the summit bid. That's it, stay tuned for the next dispatch.

— Charles Corfield, Expedition Science Manager

DISPATCHES