NEPAL TIME: 
|  Manaslu (8163m) and Dhaulagiri (8167m) |
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At Dhaulagiri Base Camp Friday, April 30, 1999 — 2:22am (PST)
 Hear Ed's Call from NepalClick for [RealAudio] [Windows Media](Requires FREE RealPlayer or Windows Media) |
Hi this is Ed Viesturs reporting on April 30th and we are right now in Dhaulagiri Base Camp. It's 3:00 in the afternoon and Veikka and myself and our cook Dorje are right now finally in Dhaulagiri Base Camp. Yahoo! It took us two days of walking, yesterday and the day before yesterday, to get down valley to the village of Philim where we were allowed to get a helicopter flight in, and it was a long two days, it was hot, it was a long ways, let me tell you, but we're finally down.
All our gear made it and this morning, at about 8:00 in the morning, a helicopter flew in. It wasn't a big one like we expected. We were hoping for a big Soviet MI-17 because that one could have picked us and all of our gear up and just plopped us down here at Base Camp, but as it was they sent a small one, small helicopter. We had to fly to Pokhara, we stopped, we re-fueled, we had to shuffle loads, had to pare down even the stuff we had already pared down to the bare essentials just so this little thing could fly us up there.
And then we had to split into two trips. It took Veikka and myself and some gear first, flew halfway up here, landed in a small village, I got out with some gear. It flew Veikka up to here, we're at 14,400 feet, dropped him, flew back down to the village, picked me up and my gear, came back for me and then landed. And then flew all the way back to Pokhara to pick up our cook Dorje and his cook boy and all of our food and they did the same process over.
So the pilot really did an amazing job. He really looked at it as a challenge to get us up here rather than a day below where we would have had to hire porters and walk further, and in a place where finding porters would have been next to impossible. So I think he took it upon himself to make it a mission to get us here to Base Camp and we're thankful for that.
So we're here now. We got our tents up, we're heating up some water, we're settling in. We're probably going to take a rest day tomorrow, on Saturday, and then start the climb on Sunday. Hoping to do it in three or four days very quickly, very light, carrying all of our equipment on our backs, Veikka and myself: four or five days worth of food and fuel, a tiny tent, our little quilt and just go for it. Hoping the weather is going to be good; we're going to see how it goes.
Looking from right here at Base Camp, it is quite dry here, a lot drier than even when we were here last year. So we're assuming and hoping that the snow conditions up high are going to be primo, very hard cramponing all the way up.
So that's it for now, we're going to kick back for a while. We're happy to be here, very happy to be here, and maybe I'll touch base again tomorrow once we've packed up and planning our ascent of Dhaulagiri. Thanks for listening, Ed Viesturs from Dhaulagiri Base Camp, 14,400 feet, signing out.
— Ed Viesturs, Mountain Zone Correspondent
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