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Acclimating and Feeling Good
Namche - Friday, April 7, 2000
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Prittie

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Hello Mountain Zone, this is Willi Prittie reporting for the Alpine Ascents International Everest 2000 program again from Namche Bazaar. We had a really great acclimation hike yesterday. We left Namche Bazaar quite early and headed out to the village of Thame. Had a beautiful walk through a pretty much undisturbed forest of fir and juniper being there. Saw quite a bit of wildlife yesterday as well on the walk there was a herd of tahrs that we ran in to part way through there. The last few days we've seen a number of bird species, we've seen yellow billed tufts, jungle crows, tree sparrows, a pair of dark kite, some blood pheasants and we think a coal tit. One of the things that we were looking for in terms of wildlife was some of the impeyan pheasants, which is the national bird of Nepal. It's a wonderful, beautiful, irridescent, blue bird but we missed seeing that yesterday, so we have hopes of that later on.

The route that we took actually follows the Bhote Kosi towards Thame. The Bhote Kosi translates...Bhote is the word for Tibet and Kosi is river, actually it means the river which comes from Tibet. And if you follow that all the way up it actually comes from Nangpa La, which is a very famous, ancient trading route; has the history of well over 1,000 years of trading between the Tibetan plateau and the lowlands. It's about 6000-meters high. It's a very broad, glaciated pass. One thousand years ago it was pretty tough conditions for the technology of the day compared to what we have as current mountaineers.

This route however was closed in the 1950s by the brutal invasion and take over of Tibet by the Chinese. Since then some trade has actually resumed and there is still, even to this day, a flow of refugees from Tibet and from the Chinese occupation to India and to various places in Nepal. Thame kind of sits at the confluence of streams, the Bhote Kosi turns to the north and goes towards Tibet. There's another stream or river valley that comes in from the west and that one basically follows up and goes over another high pass called Tesi Lapcha, which is about 5800 meters, also glaciated, and it connects the Khumbu region of Nepal to the Rolwaling region of Nepal. A little bit of the geography of this area there and it is very, very spectacular scenery as I say: a lot of mountain views, forests and whatnot going through.

Everybody's doing quite well with the acclimation — altitude acclimation. Some of the numbers that we have this morning were: average O₂ stats of 91 and average pulse of 70, which is more or less about the same as what is has been. We decided that we probably better take those after everybody starts drinking coffee, however, tomorrow morning [laughs], excuse me before everybody starts drinking coffee.

As far as the acclimation process, it's a physiological process which one's body changes over a period of days or weeks to more efficiently and safely function in an 0₂ division environment. It is important to understand many who are new to high altitude kind of often times let their excitement or enthusiasm of being in such a spectacular place get the better of them, and they quite frequently push up to higher elevations too fast and pay the price with altitude illness. So for us it is very, very important to take our time and lay a very good, solid foundation of acclimation for the ultimate challenge which awaits us up high on Chomolungma herself. And this is what we are doing, everybody is doing quite well, like I said we had about an eight-hour hiking day round trip between Namche Bazaar and Thame. Enjoyed a good lunch at Thame. Everybody felt very good still with energy to spare when we came back. So it looks like we are going to have one more day here in Namche with beautiful weather today. Light winds from the north east at about 3.5mph or about 5kph. The altitude on the altimeters has actually dropped to 3460m today — actual according to the map is 3440m.

Today's plan we're actually going to be leaving late-morning and gaining about 4 to 500 meters in altitude again furthering our acclimation and we'll be visiting the village of Khumjung and having lunch and seeing what mischief we can get into up there today. But it looks like it will be another beautiful day here in the Khumbu and we'll be sending you guys some images and keeping updated as necessary. So that is all...one more thing I did have here is I have a list of, a couple of short messages here: Jack O'Donnell would like to say hello to all of the 4th grade kids at Academy International Elementary School in Colorado Springs and thanks for all of the support, that is a group of school kids who are actually following us here on the Mountain Zone site. Also, Kevin Grant would like to say hello to Carol's class and also happy birthday to his dad Edward Grant. And finally, Bryce Brown our medical doctor on the trip would like to [Unintelligible] at Lakewood school in Kinora, Ontario, in Canada.

We will be again sending some messages and checking in as things change and we continue to progress on our acclimation schedule on the way to Base Camp. So this is Willi signing off for now.

— Willi Prittie, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent

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