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Weather and Acclimatization on Upswing
Base Camp - Thursday, April 27, 2000
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A great big, warm howdy to all you Zoners. This is Vernon Tejas, with the Alpine Ascents team, at Base Camp on Everest. Today we acclimatized once again, patiently waiting and biding our time. We split into two teams, Al in one...myself. We went for a hike along the trail that the yaks bring in food and supplies to Base Camp. We spent a couple hours out there, just stretching our legs and getting oxygen on board that we need, and ultimately just trying to get ready for the big push that's in front of us.
The other team consisted of Willi and Bryce, our medical officer. They went up on the moraine ridge of Khumbutse, right behind Base Camp, looking for a weather logger that had been left here a year earlier. They searched high and they searched low, however, the data recorder was not to be found. Obviously, somebody else had already picked it up. But this is one of our scientific thrusts of this expedition...is, as we go up higher on the mountain there's other data loggers that we're supposed to retrieve as well. We'll be looking for those at Camp II and at the South Col Camp and also right on the summit ridge, Bishop Rock; so we've got our mission cut out for us. Unfortunately phase one didn't pan out so well, but we've got three other phases of retrieving that weather data logging mechanism.
So, please stay by us and enjoy all this good Base Camp food, we've been sucking it up, big time. Interestingly enough — as could be expected — now that we're down low, our oxygen saturations are returning to much better levels than they were even before we left. We've got 86, is the average for the group, the climbing team, and 71 is now our average pulse rate. So we are actually progressing in the physiological front. It's been quite clear today, and warm: 8 Celsius and our relative pressure is at 5,400 meters. So the weather looks like it's starting to get better, and that's good news, because people are getting real excited about heading up the mountain. Stay in tune, and we'll talk to you later. That's all for now from Nepal and we'll check in mañana.
— Vern Tejas, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent
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