You are here: Everest Home >>South Col Climb >>Dispatches >>Dispatch

Sunrise Pinks the Eastern Face
Namche - Wednesday, April 5, 2000
Get the Latest Weather

DISPATCHES

Tejas

Hear Vern's Call LISTEN: [RealPlayer]  [Windows Media] (Requires a FREE media player to listen)

	Click For Dispatch Photos

Good morning Mountain Zone this is Vern Tejas with Everest 2k Expedition. Last night was our first night to all be together for a dinner and goodness gracious we went around the table and everybody got to tell their story and what their goals were and it seems like safety is preeminent in everybody's mind.

The team now consists of eight of us from North America and that would be: Al, who is now approaching his 70th year and has been climbing for 15, and of those he's done six of the seven summits; Kevin, who's a marathon runner from Boston and who also has been up Mount McKinley on a couple occassions, as well as climbed in Europe; and then there's Jack O'Donnell, from Colorado, he's a high falutin', high son-of-a-gun, he's done the Ironman amongst other things; and then there's Stacy Taniguchi, who has been guiding on Mount McKinley for over 14 years and a good friend of mine; Bryce Brown joins us from the wonderful country of Canada and is going to be our medical officer; Ellie, who is going to go all the way to Base Camp and will keep our logistics straightened out, I met over 10 years ago on the north side of Everest and she's one of the best let me tell you; and then Willi Prittie, famous mountain guide from the Pacific Northwest, with over 26 years of professional guiding, is joining with our team to give it the ultimate strength and give it a very great depth when it comes to technique.

Along with myself, we have 15 Sherpas, who amongst all them, if we add up total summits, and there's over 32 Everest summits within our group, a tremendously strong group. And we're looking forward to putting all those cards in our favor.

This morning some of us got up before sunrise and went up to the park headquarters, where there's a beautiful view of Mount Everest, and got to see the first rays of sunlight pink up the slope of the eastern face of that huge peak. So, with that in mind, and a wonderful start, we've now been doing science every morning, under our medical officer's supervision and we're working on a paper that we're hoping to be able to publish, testing lung capacity at altitude. So please stay with us and we'll share those numbers with you as they're generated.

Now for you young minds out there, I want you to tell me 'how do you make a conversion between meters and feet?' Now we all know the world's going metric so you need to get those conversions down and start thinking metric as well, if you don't already.

Now any of those folks out there who are interested in numbers, we're still located in Namche Bazaar, where we're acclimatizing. Temperature this morning was only 35 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly 1.6 degrees centigrade, or Celsius as some people say. Wind was very calm, three miles an hour out of the northeast. As the day progresses, as we saw yesterday, it generally becomes quite dusty in the afternoon. And we end up with little dust devils in and around our hotel here in Namche Bazaar. Wind chill is zero degrees Celsius, and we also are at the same elevation lat and long as yesterday as I mentioned. As a group we now have an oxygen saturation of 92 percent and as a group we also have an average pulse of 65. Thank you so much, Ciao for now from Namche Bazaar.

— Vern Tejas, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent

Email this story to a friend