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08 APR 2001
 Audio Dispatch
Viesturs
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Hi, this is Ed Viesturs reporting. It's the evening of April 8 and we're now in the Tibetan village of Nyalam at about 12,330 feet.
I wasn't able to report last night since all of our gear and equipment was kind of trapped on the other side of the border and we happened to be on the Chinese side. So this it the first time I've been able to get to our luggage and retrieve the phone.
Yesterday morning we left Kathmandu at about 7:30am and we drove up toward the Tibetan border. It's about five hours of driving. It's really not that far of a distance but you go relatively slowly, kind of like high altitude climbing. We got to the border and we were at that time travelling with a couple of other climbers that are also journeying with us to Shishapangma Base Camp, American Dimitri Walton and a climber from Mexico, Alex Villarreal.
We spent a couple of hours at the border, at a town called Kodari, where we had to do paperwork and get exited from the country of Nepal. Then we had to climb a zig-zag road which happened to be broken by some rock fall. The trucks were stuck there during the later part of the day while they were fixing it. We continued climbing up the road and eventually jumped into another truck that brought us to the border. Another hour or so of paperwork, crossing legally then at the official crossing point into China. That's where we then spent the night, in the village of Zhangmu, at a little over 7,000 feet.
We got up this morning and we waited another five hours while the trucks were slowly allowed to come across the border. They come across one at a time. The loads then need to be transferred from the Nepally trucks into the Chinese trucks and there's hundreds and hundreds of trucks that pass on that road into Nepal and also into Tibet in the opposite direction. It's one of the main trade routes from China into Nepal. The road then crosses what's called the Friendship bridge, that connects Nepal with Tibet, the bridge spans the Sun Kosi river.
We spent the morning waiting for our truck to finally be allowed to cross and unloaded into a Chinese truck and by then it was 12:00 in the afternoon, so we had breakfast. In the meantime Veikka and I did a little last minute shopping. We bought about 20 packets of dried pineapple and apricots to strengthen our supply for the mountain. We bought a box of candy bars and a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, which we'll save for the end of the climb when we have our party before we leave. It's kind of amazing of all the American beers brewed in the world the Chinese have decided to brew Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. So if your from the Midwest and you happen to be in Tibet, you can feel a little bit like your at home, cause there is tons of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer to be found here in China.
We finally left Zhangmu at noon and drove about 2 ½ hours up along the Sun Kosi river. The road is carved into the edge of the steep gorge and the river flows several hundred feet below. It's quite an amazing road and the Sun Kosi river actually originates high on the Tibetan plateau at about 14,000 feet and slices its way down through the Himalayan range and dumps out , I believe, into the Bay of Bengal. So the Sun Kosi river has actually been around longer than the Himalayas, but as the Himalayas started to rise the river kept carving and slicing as the mountains rose around it.
So here we are now in the windy, somewhat desolate village of Nyalam. We'll spend three nights here at 12,300 feet. We'll spend the next couple of days hiking up the valleys in the area and hills in the area to acclimatize and to stay fit. Then, after three nights here, we'll then drive from here all the way to Base Camp, which is at about 15,000 feet high on the Tibetan plateau.
So that's it for now. It's been a fun trip up to now, we're right on schedule, things are going well. It turns out our liaison officer, the person that's assigned to us by the Chinese government, is an old friend of mine, Wang Ja. I climbed with him in 1990. He was the Tibetan team member when I was on the American-Soviet-Tibetan peace climb and so he is a good old friend and I'm happy to have him on our side. He takes care of us, looks after all of our logistics while we are here in Tibet.
So that's it for now from high in Tibet. It's a little bit windy now, Veikka and I are sitting on the roof of the hotel so I can get a good beam on the satellite. But things are going well. Talk again tomorrow. Ed Viesturs, over and out for MountainZone.com
— Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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