Dave Hahn

Setting out from base camp is plenty easy when you've got your altitude cough under control. If you are heading to ABC for the second or third time of the trip, you probably walk out of base camp a lot like a regular human, perhaps forgetting the way you crawled out, stopping frequently for air that first push up from 17,000'.

But it is "easy" because you are walking straight at the summit of Mount Everest. You are probably resolving that THIS TIME, you're going to do everything right. Not going to get too sunburned. Not going to forget to eat and drink somewhere up there where the distractions come in. Going to take care of the throat, going to dress right, going to work like an animal, impress everyone and quit just one day before becoming too tired to be useful for further work on this climb...

Having the summit and that big North Face triangle, square in your face helps you make resolutions. You probably have on some hiking boots, gators, trekking pants (those are light trousers with your favorite climbing label prominent), a midweight top and pile sweater (this year's colors please). You want two ski poles and some light gloves. Put on a baseball cap for the sun (it doesn't really matter if it is a "cool" one or not, you aren't going to bump into anyone who shares your vision of "cool") slap on the glacier glasses.

If you are on my team, you are probably messing with your Walkman and headphones that first hundred yards out of camp. But then, after about fifteen minutes, when you leave the big flat alluvial area and go into the little gully formed by the present day lateral moraine against the big thousand foot high old moraine, you better take off the head tunes. Rocks fall down here, they're easy enough to avoid if you hear them coming, but it would be an embarrassing way to go if you didn't.

You are now walking pretty darn close to the Central Rongbuk Glacier, although you might not see it that way. No ice and snow around this part of the glacier. Or none visible, as the glacier is just a huge conveyor belt of rock at this point. When you are feeling well, you "cruise" this part of the route in an hour or a bit more. It is barely uphill until you get to where the first big side valley comes in. That is the East Fork of the Rongbuk, and you want to be sure to turn left up that way. Go straight and you may have to be writing to the climbing mags afterward because everything up the Central Rongbuk is the hard way up Everest.

Heading up the steep hill into the mouth of the new valley would be harder if you didn't get to look over at Pumori while you worked. Pumori is one of those "little" 23,000' peaks that you could brag for decades about just touching, steep and toothlike... the way kids draw mountains.

Say goodbye to Everest for a bit because you are now in a tight valley with steep, rocky and mountainous walls cutting off the big views. You gain almost a thousand feet before you are properly in the valley. The "trail" eases, and you find yourself at a relatively flat place with a bit more Yak dung around than normal. Must be Camp I. But if you're new at this, you say "Ah, Camp I in two hours, at this rate I'll be in Camp VI in ten more hours." Yeah... maybe, more likely you will be looking for the ibuprofen and a friendly Gamow bag.

Camp I is 18,000', the perfect place to sleep (1000' higher than BC) when you are working into the altitude for the first time of the trip. Camp I seems to have fallen out of favor these days. There aren't any tents there now, just a bunch of fat looking Ptarmigan-like birds. In the good old days, say in the twenties or thirties, when the British had this part of the planet to themselves, you could leave a camp here with food and stoves and just use it when you were passing through. Same with Camp II a bit farther up, perhaps as the trip went on and your acclimatization advanced, you wouldn't even need these camps on the way to ABC (Camp III). No matter, they were there if you wanted them. These days if you left a tent at Camp I, folks would take your stove, eat your food, and it is a sure bet that a Yak herder would take a fancy to the pretty cord that was holding your tent from blowing away. Herdsmen like rope and cord — theirs is made from yak-hair — thanks for the new stuff.

If this sounds terrible, try leaving a tent pitched for the summer on the Appalachian Trail and see how the herdsmen there treat it. Too much anonymous traffic in old Camp I. Most of us now work out of some intermediate camp (IC) halfway to ABC, easier to defend. From Camp I though, the hard walking begins.

— Dave Hahn, International Mountain Guides' Expedition Leader

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