Daily Dispatches [CLICK FOR INDEX]
Athans Can Climb But He Can't Hide
Wed, March 24, 1999 —Lukla, Nepal
Hi Mountain Zone, this is Pete Athans from Everest Millennium. We are in the village of Lukla at about 9,600 feet. Just giving you a quick call here to let you know that we have arrived safely out of the fog and smoke of Kathmandu finally to some of the higher mountain areas.
I'm just looking out, it's night now, it rained a little bit today, so I can see that the sky is trying to clear out a little bit, it really looks quite beautiful.
But more importantly, and on a personal level, I was delivered a very beautiful gift today. It was a nice t-shirt that was actually embroidered with Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse on it. Unfortunately, on top of that very nice vista there was the words "Everest Anonymous," and underneath that was "Repeat Sufferer." Unfortunately, a little card that was delivered with it had the names and bank account numbers of all the people from Everest Anonymous to whom I owe about a thousand bucks each. So that was my little parting gift from everybody from our little arcane club. Brigitte Muir was behind that — she was of course the first Australian woman to climb Mount Everest, and Brigitte, if you are here listening to this, thanks very much for your nice gift. I hope I get around to paying you sometime. [editor's note: Five time Everest summiter, Pete Athans, is a member of an exclusive club called Everest Anonymous, formed in 1997 by climbers who have spent altogether way too much time in the Everest region of the Himalayas. Including multiple summiters Dave Breashears and Ed Viesturs, the members have sworn off the mountain, and promised that the first of their ranks to fall off the wagon owes the others $1000 each. Athans held out almost two years.]
In any case, we are here with a lot of our equipment. We will be meeting with a number of Sherpas in Namche Bazaar about a day and a half walk. We will have a pretty huge market to go to on Saturday morning and we hope you will all stand ready to see some great images from that. We will try and get some great video for you and some still images as well, and really try and take you into what is truly the commercial center of the Khumbu valley. It's just a wonderful place and I hope you get a chance to log on and check us out here.
It's a beautiful night here; we are just kind of looking out over a couple of little scenes here. I see a couple of tents out here with some lanterns glowing in them, a little open air kitchen and some people playing cards, just a really fantastic and very quiet scene. Very different to where we had been in Kathmandu where it was incredibly congested. And, as I mentioned, very smoky and foggy as a result of the dryness and also the fires that are burning in western/eastern Nepal. So it's nice to be out in the hills finally, and we look forward to talking to you all really soon. Take care, this is Pete signing off for now.
—Pete Athans, Expedition Leader
