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

The Gift of Giardia
Dingboche - Tuesday, April 11, 2000
Get the Latest Weather

DISPATCHES

Prittie

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

	Click For Dispatch Photos

Hello Mountain Zone, this is Willi Prittie reporting from the Alpine Ascents International Mount Everest Program, and I'm just going to give you an update here from Dingboche in Nepal. We had a really nice walk up from Deboche, up-valley. We had about two inches of fresh snow overnight on the ground. So all of the mountains were very resplendent in their coating of fresh snow and also being able to walk through the forest with a nice, fresh dusting of snow on everything was a real treat yesterday.

For me it was a little bit of a taxing day, yesterday. I had a little gift from Kathmandu; I came down with some giardia two nights ago. The wonders of modern drugs being what they are, I'm actually fully recovered from that today and very appreciative of that fact.

Everybody else is doing quite well. The oxygen sats are predictably down a little bit. We are 4360 meters here, or about 14,300 feet, which has brought the oxygen sat down average for the group to about 87 percent, average pulse about 73.

This morning, we've got beautiful weather. You can see all the mountains around us but it is quickly clouding over again. Early morning reading was a very, very light breeze from the south at 4.2 kilometers-per-hour. It's now gusting to about 12 kilometers-per-hour, from the south. Looks like we might have a little bit of weather again dealing with tonight.

So like I say, in general things are doing very good here in Dingboche. Today is another rest and acclimation day; we'll be taking a day hike up-valley towards the South Face of Lhotse and Island Peak, gaining maybe 1000 feet or so of elevation to help the acclimation process continue along its way.

Oh yes, our lat-longitude here is 27 degrees, 53.509 minutes and 86 degrees 49.817 minutes, for those of you who are following with the global charts. So that's all from Dingboche on this day and we'll be keeping you up to date as things continue to transpire with our acclimation and rest day. Ciao.

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

Email this story to a friend