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DISPATCHES FROM EVEREST Expedition leader Todd Burleson reports from Nepal
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Thursday, April 3, 1997 -- 3pm (Kathmandu)
 Four or five teams will be on Lhotse, too. Mal Duff will be on a team on Lhotse of which I am also a member of. So, I hope to climb both Everest and Lhotse this year. I think there is a Russian expedition going to Lhotse also. They'll be going up towards Everest, towards the South Col, climbing on the normal route of Lhotse and then try to traverse the central peak and then descend Lhotse Shar. It's never been done before. It's extremely hard. I'm interested to see how they come off."
The trek to Base Camp will take ten days. The itinerary is Lukla (9,500')... next day they walk up to Namche Bazaar at 11,500' Namche is really the center of commerce, and that's where we'll buy a lot of the extra gear and food and rice for the extra sherpas that we need. We'll spend three days there -- shoot a lot of film, take photographs, basically acclimatize. It's a great spot to rest and get used to the altitude. The next day we'll walk to the Thyangboche monastery, which is the center of Buddhism in the Khumbu. There we will spend two nights, rest and acclimatize further. The next day its up to Pheriche at around 14,500'. We spend three days there and the next day is Lobuche at 16,000'. I will go straight to base camp at 17,300 ft after that -- everyone else will go to Gorak Shep, which is an in-between spot, and then climb Kala Pattar. We take a long time to do that because really we start climbing the mountain as soon as we get to Lukla. If you develop an excellent base acclimatization-wise,. you do much better up high and you have a lot less chance of getting ill. So that's our goal. Most of our Sherpa are already in base, and they're chipping away at stones, building our kitchens for us, getting ready for us to arrive. So, it looks like we have a great campsite from what I've heard. Several of the teams are getting there. David Breashears and Pete Athans are working their way up. They're members of both Steve and my teams where they'll be doing some geological experiments and also making a short documentary on it. So, that's it for now. Just wanted to touch-base. Hope all of you people are great back there. We're wonderful here and really excited about the climb. Talk to you soon. -- Todd Burleson, Expedition Leader |
Click to hear Todd Burleson's audio dispatch recorded over sat-phone.[Dispatches from Everest Index]
Photos by Peter Potterfield/The Mountain Zone and
Todd Burleson/Alpine Ascents International.
1997 Everest Expedition with
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