Boys, you?ve got yourself an expedition!

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I didn?t get time to write a Blog last night due to the frenzied activity that took place with the arrival of the equipment. It?s about 10 days late, but luckily that was factored into any planning that we made. Why it took so long, I will never know ? it?s probably faster to drive to Kathmandu!

With nothing to do until that point, the Logistics Team were lounging in my hotel room discussing our plans for what to do if the equipment went over our planned deadline. Suddenly, the door burst open and Kit Spencer rushed in, with a huge beaming grin on his face.

?Boys, you?ve got yourself an expedition!?

We rushed over to the compound, where queues of small trucks filled the area and dozens of Sherpas were frantically unloading the barrels and boxes. It all came as a bit of a surprise and I hadn?t briefed Pema, the Sirdar (Head Sherpa) of where everything was meant to be placed.

Tons of barrels were already piled into a corner, so I had to explain that the colour coding on each barrel denoted a different area of the compound. Within minutes, like an army of ants, the barrels were sorted out into their respective piles. More trucks arrived, blocking the way out for those that had finished unloading and there was plenty of shouting and gesturing at the truck drivers to squeeze past each other and keep the long convoy moving.

It took about 2 hours to offload all 853 containers, but the hard work was yet to come, to sort them out into number order and check that every item had arrived safely. One of the exercise bikes was delivered upside down, so we have to make sure that there has been no damage to it. With much shaking of hands and pats on the back all round, we finally called it a night as the rains came.

Today we rose early and finished breakfast quickly to get cracking on equipment sorting and building the Kathmandu laboratory. Lee set about putting all the Everest Base Camp barrels in number order, which was no mean feat in itself. Paul started work on the Kathmandu power set-up, while I concentrated on getting the 20 Honda generators ready.

As the generators are brand new, courtesy of Ian Radcliffe at Honda UK, we needed to ?run them in? for 20 hours before they could be put into service by the different laboratories. Filling with oil, checking levels and fuelling took the best part of 2 hours to complete.

Matt Parkes from Jagged Globe has volunteered for the unenviable task of looking after the liquid nitrogen as it is transported up the mountain. Carried in what can best be described as a milk-churn, the liquid nitrogen, which is used for keeping blood samples cold, is too dangerous to be flown in an aircraft. It therefore has to be driven to the small village of Jiri at the end of the road head and walked in to the mountain labs. Just to walk to Namche will take a full 10 days!

The Kathmandu lab is progressing well, but with frequent power-cuts here, we have to be entirely self-sufficient and this means a complex array of batteries, backed up by a generator. Paul is in his element, with tools, cables and electrical bits everywhere; so much so, we had to drag him away from his ?toys? to eat lunch!

By the end of play today we had checked that everything had arrived; well the research kit did. One of the barrels supplied by Jagged Globe has gone missing and after a detailed search here, we still cannot find it. We hope that it is still up at the airport.

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Blog by Mac Mackenney