NEWS: 16th Sep 2006
The Climbing Begins
Eleven of the team are on the mountain, working their way via Lake Camp to Camp One. The rest of the team have stayed at Advanced Base camp (5600m) to await a casualty from a different climbing team. A male has developed a dense weakness on his right side, and two of our more acclimatized doctors have raced up to just below Lake Camp to retrieve him.
With the help of our strong and willing sherpas, this casualty was carried in a stretcher across undulating glacier moraine to our campsite. In the meantime the remaining five team members had converted our Drash Laboratory into a high dependency unit. The tent was perfect for the job, as it warmed up with a small gas heater nicely. There was plenty of headroom, and we were able to hang an intravenous drip easily from the ceiling. Chris Imray and Mark Wilson assisted our Medical Officer, Denny Levett, to examine the casualty, using the transcranial Doppler and near infrared spectroscopy machine. We were able to monitor the patient easily using the Dash 3000 ITU monitor provided by GE Healthcare. Some of these seven team members stayed up all night looking after the climber, before Chris Imray evacuated the casualty to Kathmandu with the assistance of the climber's Sherpa team, and western leader.
Chris Imray was not to rejoin the group for three days due to problems with border crossing, and transport. By this time the rest of the team had moved onto the mountain, except for Sundeep Dhillon, who waited for Chris at advanced base camp. As mentioned before, some members of the team have found it more difficult to acclimatize than others. Therefore, whilst some members of the team experienced difficulties on reaching Camp One at 6300m, other members of the team were able to reach Camp Two at over 7000m. the climb from Camp One to Camp Two is long and hard and can take up to 10 hours. The Xtreme Everest Sirdar maintains that if a climber can manage to climb from Camp One to Camp Two in one day, rather than stopping at Camp one and a half for a night on the way, then that climber has the strength to make it to the summit. Six of our team made it to Cam two in one day. Unfortunately, our regular weather reports via Jagged globe demonstrated that there was a storm coming in, and so the whole team had no option but to evacuate to advanced base camp to wait it out.
The team has now spent five days waiting for the snow to stop. Each morning on waking the campsite has been buried deeper under snow, and this morning, the sherpas have had to help us dig out our two man tents. We also had to dig the Honda generators out of the snow, but they started straight away without any problems. Despite this the team has been in good spirits. We have continued to carry out scientific experiments, including metabolic efficiency tests and ramp tests using the Lode bikes and the Cortex Breath by Breath gas analysis machines. We have been monitoring our weight loss, and body composition using calipers and bioimpedence, and tomorrow we will be using gastric tonometry in association with the Lode and Cortex machines to look at gastric perfusion during exercise at altitude.
When not engaged in science the team has been playing scrabble, trivial pursuit, and cards, or watching a selection of DVDs all provided by Jagged Globe. We have been trying to eat as much as we can, in order to keep our strength up as many members of the team lose their appetites as they ascend to high altitude.
This afternoon, it appears to have stopped snowing, and the sun has come out. We are hoping that this has heralded a period of clearer weather. We took the opportunity to take some photos for the Xtreme Everest Christmas Card, Blanche had sent me off with to Cho Oyu with some Christmas hats and a Christmas stocking. They looked great with the red Mountain Equipment gear in the snow with Cho Oyu behind. We were gathered around the Stupa, and our Sherpa cooks found our antics very amusing. Some of us had a snow ball fight, and Mac made a snow man. Now we must wait to see if the snow clears enough to make the mountain relatively safe from avalanches over the next few days. Then, we can resume our attempt on the summit. We need some wind and/or sun to clear the excess snow off the mountain. Wish us well.