Potterfield

Click to hear Peter Potterfield's audio dispatch from Namche.
From Potterfield's Audio Dispatch:
We're here at 11,600' -- we're a little bit higher than the rest of Namche [11,300'] because we're staying at the Panorama Hotel. It's pretty nice hanging here in Namche... We got up this morning and scraped the ice off the windows in our rooms because there's no heat -- you sleep in your sleeping bag -- and we could tell it was going to be another nice day. We're into a cycle here where we get these beautiful, sunny mornings for about four hours, then it snows like hell. Right now there's about three inches of new snow here on the ground, and when it melts by the end of the day, we'll have a... mix of yak-shit and mud, and a fall into that doesn't bear thinking about.

Nuptse, Everest, and Lhotse viewed from the Everest View Hotel

On the way down to Namche, we got caught in a really sick snowstorm and couldn't even see where we were going. But we finally got down to the Panorama Lodge where our sherpa staff made us a lunch of cheese-sandwiches and potato, and there was a side-dish of these weird little sausages that we don't know where they came from. We started out the day with hard-boiled egg and pancakes. Pretty good. A pretty normal day of food.

The real fun of this group though is the humans involved. We've got a great group of climbers, scientists, and journalists. We're really two separate groups here under the same permit, but that doesn't matter; we're all traveling together. [Guides Eric Simonson and Greg Wilson are leading an independent climb on the Alpine Ascents International permit.] We'll be glad when Todd can rejoin the team [Burleson is stuck in Kathmandu awaiting a ministry signature], but there's plenty of Everest experience here now:

Wally Berg of Copper Mountain, CO. He's a ski patroller; he's a friendly, intense guy; he's been to Everest six years out of the past nine and has been in the Khumbu more than 15 separate times.

Eric Simonson has been on Everest five times and made more than 20 Himalayan climbs including Cho-Oyu... This is a big time in Eric's life: he's establishing a new guide service on Rainier, called Rainier Alpine Guides, and he'll be running its first trip this summer, and he had to resign his 25-year position with Rainier Mountaineering. [Alpine Ascents International and three other companies were also awarded licenses to guide on Rainier. See the news story.] He's tall and easy going, and Eric's right out of the Central Casting Department. He lives near Mount Rainier.

Greg Wilson and I figured out we'd met in 1985 on a climb on Rainier. He lives in Sun Valley, ID; he's a short, stocky, strong guy. Wilson's been to Everest four times, but always from the north side, so like me, he's going to the Khumbu for the first time. Greg is funny and very unpretentious.

Charles Corfield is a droll Englishman living in San Francisco, CA. Although he's got considerable high-altitude experience, he describes himself as a dilettante with a cool backpack. He's been unusually successful in the mountains, and he's never at a loss for a bad joke or a lame comment. He's also been extremely successful in the Silicone Valley computer industry.

Leslie Buckland [climber on the team guided by Eric Simonson and Greg Wilson] is a New Yorker who has retired and returned to a life of adventure in the mountains. He's already taken some heavy flak for his photography jones, or as Charles Corfield likes to say, "his too frequent Kodak-moments."

Freddy Blume: a guy who's always up to something whether it's dragging his gravity-meter up the hill to measure the gravity deviations caused by Everest or playing his guitar or opening a bottle of scotch.

It's an intelligent, funny cabal of climbers, scientists and journalists who are moving up to Thyangboche tomorrow. We hear Guy Cotter [leader of New Zealand's Adventure Consultants formerly owned by Rob Hall] just got to Namche, and we hear Dave Breashears and Pete Athans are a couple of days ahead of us.

The big news today from Namche is that Greg and I washed our hair, and Charles sorted the medical gear. Pretty mellow here at 11,600'. The next report will be from Thyangboche.

-- Peter Potterfield, Mountain Zone Correspondent