We made it!

What a relief for me to know that we pulled off this crucial first part of the expedition! Just getting to Rongbuk, half way around the world, with twenty-five people and 16,000 pounds of food, fuel, equipment, and supplies is quite a challenge. We are now all set to be 100% SELF SUFFICIENT for the next two months.

The last leg of our journey started yesterday morning before dawn at Tingri, where we loaded our personal duffels in our fourth truck (which we had previously loaded the night before with my gear which was stored in Tingri from our ‘98 IMG Cho Oyu expedition). We then piled into four jeeps and headed east, towards Shegar, then south, climbing up and over Pang La pass.

Along the way the sun rose and by the time we made it to Pang La, we were treated to great views and the best day yet since we entered Tibet. The stormy weather of the past few days moved on and it was great to get to Pang La again and see five 8000’ers: Makalu, Lhotse, Everest (Chomolungma), Cho Oyu, and Shishapangma.

After the mandatory photo stop at the pass, we descended sharply over a steep dirt road to the floor of the Rongbuk valley, which we then followed to Base Camp. This valley is the home of several small Tibetan villages that are very traditional and untouched by tourists. At this time of the year the local people are starting to prepare their fields for planting, which will happen in the next month. Before then, however, the village men will take time out to provide yak services to the expeditions at Rongbuk. As we passed through, we made arrangements for 42 yaks (and 14 yak herders) to come up to BC (Base Camp) on April 1 to assist us in making ABC (Advanced Base Camp).

A few miles below BC, at about 15,500 feet, we passed Rongbuk Monastery, the highest monastery in the world. This complex has been rebuilt considerably in the last ten years, and now sports new monk housing (a little further up the valley is the nunnery). The view from Rongbuk is classic, with the big stupa setting the foreground scene for the unique mixing of history, culture, and human endeavor that takes place each season on the North Side of Chomolungma.

A little further up the valley we pulled onto the broad glacial outwash plain at about 17,000 feet that marks the site of BC, about 6 hours by jeep from Tingri. We were lucky to have a beautiful (and rare) windless day for our arrival. It was great to be greeted by Pasang and Pemba with big cups of juice, and to see all the Sherpas again. They had been busy during the day that they were here ahead of us, and had already set up the Chinese army kitchen tent and similar storage tent, our mess tent, and a number of our Eureka sleeping tents. After unloading our last truck, all the vehicles departed except for our duty jeep, which we have hired to stay at BC in case one of our team members requires emergency evacuation.

Our first job was to go through the huge pile of gear that had come off the trucks and separate out the personal duffels and the team gear, then to go through the latter for the stuff we would need immediately. The first thing we did was set up another big Eureka tent for our communication and power facility. We set up ten solar panels outside and surrounded them by a small rock wall to keep a wayward yak from walking over the panels. These, in turn feed into a charge controller, which prevents overcharging our two big deep cycle 12-volt batteries in the intense high altitude sun. These 12V batteries feed an inverter which produces 110V AC power for charging. Some of our gear (like our high power Base Camp VHF radio) use 12V DC, so this feeds right off the 12V batteries. Other gear needs the AC power. We set up our radio system and started charging our walkie-talkies. This year we will be using rechargeable batteries as much as possible, to avoid the problems associated with batteries (they are toxic waste — we will bring them back with us). We also set up the satellite phone, got the radio antennae mast and yagi antennae erected, and powered up the computers. We also have a gasoline generator, but we probably won’t need to use this unless it is cloudy for a day or two.

That was about enough for our first day at BC, as everyone was pretty whipped from driving to 17,000 feet and working all afternoon. We really want to avoid getting anybody sick. Knock on wood, but so far we are all really healthy, with no colds or diarrhea.

Today was our first big workday at BC. We've set up additional Eureka sleeping tents (each person gets their own tent at BC…its important to have a bit of personal "space" on a long trip like this). Then we've been working on making yak loads, weighing each one out to about 55 pounds. Each yak will carry two loads. We will send approximately 160 loads to ABC over the next ten days, so we will be building loads for the next several days. Other chores that we are working on include adding guy lines to all our high altitude tents, building oxygen loads (we'll send about 60 bottles up to ABC), and organizing our ABC food, fuel (kerosene and large propane cylinders), and tent loads. At ABC we’ll set up a large "weatherport" tent, another dome, a Chinese Army cooking tent and at least a dozen Mountain Hardwear sleeping tents. Other things that we are getting ready to send up to ABC include several dozen Slumberjack sleeping bags and pads (these are considered part of the upper mountain camps, so we don’t have to carry bags and pads up and down), stoves, propane gas cartridges and hanging potsets for the high altitude camps, and the fixed rope and technical equipment (this includes 45 snow pickets and 20 ice screws that we ’ll need to anchor 12,000 feet of PMI 7mm fixed rope).

Today several of our Sherpas went down the valley with the jeep driver to cut some juniper for our puja, which will take place on April 1st (the juniper smells great when burned on the puja alter). While these guys were down valley, the rest of the Sherpas built a big alter out of stones, and erected a flagpole which will support the ends of several long strands of prayer flags. The down valley Sherpas also talked to the Lama at Rongbuk Monastery about what would be the most auspicious day for the puja, and the Lama has agreed to come up to BC on puja day to spearhead our efforts to keeps the mountain gods happy. Starting the expedition with a good puja is vitally important to the Sherpas (and thus for us too). We want to keep these guys happy!

So… that's about it for now. We are busy preparing yak loads, getting ready for the puja, and acclimatizing. It's great to get back here, and I’ve been having some heavy deja vu experience, thinking back to past trips. Right now we are the only team at BC, just like the old days, but that will change soon as other teams start coming in. It looks like we’ll be first on the hill, which is OK by me.

We'll keep you posted!

—Eric Simonson, Expedition Leader

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