Saturday & Sunday 29/30th April - Kangchenjunga Base Camp
This weekend has been not much like a normal May Bank Holiday for any of us on the
expedition. Yesterday John Doyle's team went up Camp 1 and they reached Camp 2 today
and will rest tomorrow before pushing on to establish Camp 3. James Raitt's team,
or the team containing James Raitt as the rest of the team prefer to be known!, will
move up the mountain on Wednesday to take over Camp 1 and will eventually move through
to take over from John Doyle & co to establish Camp 4.
Yesterday the body of Dhawa Thamang reached Base Camp and our teams filed past it
on their way up the mountain early yesterday. It was eventually flown out by helicopter
to Kathmandu later yesterday morning.
The Swiss expedition paid us a social call today and came down for a cup of tea.
They are planning to go up to the Great Shelf tomorrow to examine the snow conditions
for a summit attempt later this week. They have only 10 days left before they depart
so they must go for the top soon. The problem is that there is a lot of snow around.
Today Alan Hinkes arrived after an epic 18 day journey from Kathmandu which involved
a strike, bad weather by the bucketful and problems with porters. For those of you
who are not familiar with the name Alan is one of Britains top high altitude mountaineers
and aims to be the first Briton to climb all of the world's fourteen mountains over
8000 metres in height (see the item on Mr Um earlier this month for details of the
mountains). If successful on Kangchenjunga this will be his twelfth 8000 metre peak.
Alan is establishing a camp fairly close to ours and I expect we will see quite a
bit of him over the next few weeks. He is very proud of his membership of the Royal
Marines Reserve (RMR Tyne) and we, particularly as a Services Expedition, will be
very pleased to do what we can to help him achieve his goal. He has already gained
maximum brownie points by bringing mail for us from Kathmandu. There can be no greater
service performed!
This morning the Fleet Weather and Oceanographic Centre provided us with the weather
forecast for the period 1/2/3 May. It looks reasonable until Wednesday night when
we can expect a fairly heavy fall of snow. We are beginning to get used to the fact
that it snows on most days and if we are going to climb the mountain we have got
to be prepared to climb in less than ideal conditions. Most days have involved the
team trail breaking through fresh snow which is an exhausting exercise, particularly
at the altitudes we are working at, Ady Cole in particular deserves a medal for the
effort he has put in trailbreaking from Camp 1 to Camp 2.
Today's picture shows part of the route from Camp 1 to Camp 2. We hope to recover
a digital camera from one of the teams up the mountain tomorrow and download some
up-to-the-minute pictures. One thing families will almost certainly notice is that
the team have all lost weight - some more than others! We can't say exactly how much
because we (the expedition leader actually) forgot to bring some scales.
A very happy May Bank Holiday to all our readers.
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