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Super Stupa
Kathmandu - Sunday, April 2, 2000
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Hello Mountain Zone this is Vern Tejas for Alpine Ascents in Kathmandu. Full day it was today. First we went to go get blessed, but the Rinpoche has been on leave to Indonesia — been called away. So he was not available to bless us and now our big plan is to get blessed in Base Camp instead, with the puja there. However, with that being said, we were able to tour the monastery and go inside a beautiful, beautiful room full of thangkas on the wall and gold hanging down and big statues and just a fabulous place to take pictures and get the feel of the presence, if you will. After we did that we walked around the gigantic stupa of Bodhnath, the way I like to think about it is the 'super stupa.' It is huge. The biggest one I think in Nepal.
The rest of the day was filled up with picking up big Al and Stacy, who came with him. Stacy is going to be working with us to get everybody to the top of the mountain and that was great to be rendezvoused with Al. I hadn't seen Stacy since Alaska about five years ago and Al, of course, we just visited down in South America a couple of month ago. So that was great to see those guys and our crew is starting to come together finally. Now that that's taken place, all we've got to do is get all of our gear in order and that's what I did today. Running down parts for a solar panel, however, that was a little bit challenging in the fact that all of the shops were closed. So we made special arrangements three men came into work and we've got everything connected right and hopefully we'll be able to have good communications up in Camp II at 22,000ft on Everest — due to the fact that we now have a new power plant for our base station there.
Tonight's going to be a very early evening, as we get up at 5 in the morning and head for the airport so last minute packing is fast and furious. We're dividing our loads; half to go straight to Base Camp and the other half to follow us in our trek. We will be spending the next couple of weeks approaching Base Camp to allow our body time to acclimatize. As I've said all of our other gear will be shot up there so we have to split loads: all of our cargo so that the yaks and the porters can move some of it beyond us and the rest will follow around with us. So that being said I would like to say stay tuned for another exciting episode of Everest 2000. Ciao for now, Tejas clear.
— Vern Tejas, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent
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