Apr 22: EBC – Camp 1, 6000m

Today is the start of our first rotation up on Mt Everest.  To climb a mountain so high as Mt Everest, we need to gradually expose our body to higher altitude instead of going up in one shot, which a normal person would sure won’t survive.  To achieve that purpose, we are planning several rotations, each time sleep at higher altitude, then return to EBC to recover before going through the next rotation. A few days ago, we climbed Lobuche peak, which is as high as camp 1, so as to save us one rotation through the dangerous Khumbu ice fall. The goal of this first rotation is to adapt our body to altitude of 6500m where camp 2 is at.

(Note to readers: As Sherpa guided climb, each climber is on his/her own schedule. So when a “group” goes up the mountain, it does not mean everyone on the team is going on the same schedule. Actually, only half of my team is going on this rotation on this date; other members choose to go up on a later date because of health or strength reasons. So if you are trying to follow a specific climber, please do not assume/predict his/her whereabouts based on general group progress) 

To avoid spending too much time during heated hours in the ice fall, we started early before 4am.  A Sherpa started the Puja fire before our departure. Led by my Sherpa, we passed from the left, grabbed some rice and threw them into air three times, bow and made a pray for our safe climb, then started our walk towards the ice fall. Most of the camps along the trail are still sleeping, though from far away, can see lines of headlights in icefall already.

The beginning part of the ice fall was some up and down trekking through the maze of endless rising hills of ice of various shapes. Some part is steep and is safer to grab the fixed rope just in case. Most of the time I found it ok just hand-belay myself up instead of bothering with the jumar. Soon, we hit the first ladder and then endless ladders over all sorts of monster icebergs. Daylight starts to break, and I can clearly see the crevasse below the ladders. I would say, it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s joked that if you fell through those crevasse, you get a direct flight to America. But fortunately for me, I didn’t have a problem with the exposure, so I always looked into the crevasse to be aware of my environment. It’s an impressive mass of endless icebergs and it’s more impressive that ice doctors can find a safe path through this maze!

My cough just started picking up two days ago after that short exercise into ice fall and I coughed a lot last night. I must have coughed quite loud, because several team members asked me “Lei, are you sick?” when they passed me on the trail. “No, just cough. No problem.”.  But my cough was getting worse, I can tell. Often times I had to stop to gasp for air after a bout of bad cough, and it’s happening more frequently, which tired me out and slowed me down more and more.

Just as we finally topped out ice fall near camp 1, we suddenly heard a loud noise above us. Looking up, rain of rocks and ice/snow is flying down from the west shoulder of Everest along the big wall next to us. Luckily, it was not a huge one and it was losing strength as it came down the mountain, and there is a little bit of distance between us and the wall. We were still clipped to the rope as we just crossed one crevasse. Following my shepra, I got low to the ground and tucked head to knee. At the same time, our radio fired up with incoming inquiries from base camp and camp 1. We only got some dust from the avalanche and immediately replied safe message to the radio.

Looking from far away, the camp 1 is built on a giant gentle snow slope. But look closely, it’s laced with crevasse everywhere. We kept on making big zigzags for the safe pass, which made the trip much longer than the direct distance between us the destination that appeared to be so close to our eyes.  I can say I crossed my lifetime worth of crevasse today from the beginning of the ice fall to the camp 1 and I know I will cross them several more times again on this trip! After climbing up the final steep hill, I finally arrived at camp 1 around mid day, very tired needless to say.  I found myself first time on this trip loosing appetite and I know it’s not good. The first day at camp 1, I think the total I eat was less than what I would eat at one meal at EBC.