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Thursday 20 Apr 2000 Kangchenjunga Base Camp
Today the master plan for climbing the mountain is revealed; which starts with sorting
the expedition members into teams as follows:
Team
A Andy Hughes & Colin Scott
B Dave Pearce & Ady Cole
C John Doyle & Dave Bunting
D Dan Carroll & Ian Venables
E Roddy McArthur & Aleck Burrell
F James Raitt & Larry Foden
G Pema & Da Phuri
H Nima Dorje & Pemba Norbu
I Steve Jackson
This morning the four man team of Andy Hughes, Colin Scott, Dave Pearce and Ady Cole
(Teams A&B) moved up and occupied Camp 1with the intention of pushing the route
through to Camp 2 in the Upper Ice Fall. John Doyle, Dave Bunting, Dan Carroll and
Ian Venables (Teams C&D) with Pema and Da Phuri (Team G) helped to carry their
personal gear up to the Camp. The two Sherpas, Nima Dorje and Pemba Norbu (Team H),
left later in the day to join them carrying their own personal gear plus 4 oxygen
cylinders and two face masks to go to Camp 1 in case of an emergency bought on by
High Altitude Illness.
Teams A,B&H will push the route through to Camp 2 which they should establish
at a height of about 6,800 metres in the Upper Ice Fall by May 1st at the latest.
Once they have established and stocked Camp 2 they will return to Base Camp and the
next six (Teams C,D and G) will move up and occupy Camp 2 and push the route through
to Camp 3 at a height of about 7,300 metres somewhere near the top of the Upper Ice
Fall or even onto the Great Shelf by May 14th.
Finally, Teams E and F plus 2 of the Sherpas, as decided by Pema the Sirdar, will
establish Camp 4 somewhere on the "Gangway" at a height of around 7,800
metres, by 20th May at the latest. Everyone will then return to Base Camp to rest
and recuperate for a few days. We will then launch a series of attempts to reach
the summit by four man teams who will push through the camps one day at a time until
they reach Camp 4 from where the summit bid will be made. Success will depend upon
the weather being kind and the team not running out of steam on this huge mountain.
Having said that it has now started snowing again and it is falling quite heavily.
Hopefully this will not delay us too long but Kangchenjunga is renowned for heavy
snowfall.
On a more parochial note, we should have had some resupply yesterday by the helicopter
that took Neil Greenwood back to Kathmandu. Unfortunately it would seem that the
load (20kg of lamb, 20kg of chicken, 20 pieces of Nangilo bread, some fresh vegetables
and 300 metres of hose pipe (to pipe water from the glacier closer to Base Camp)
was inadvertently dropped off elsewhere. Our agent is sorting it out.
The good news of Neil himself is that he is on the mend and is up and about but it
is too early yet to say whether he will rejoin us.
Today's photos shows the Camp 1 to Camp 2 teams (A&B) and teams C&D having just arrived at Camp 1 at about 0900 local time this morning.
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