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It's Just Us and the Goraks
Base Camp - Friday, May 26, 2000

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Prittie

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Good Morning Mountain Zone, this is Willi Prittie reporting from Mount Everest Base Camp for the Alpine Ascents International Mount Everest Program. Well, there's nobody left here but us and the goraks — actually that's not entirely true because there are a few teams here in Base Camp. But what was once a vibrant, busy, bustling community here on the Khumbu Glacier, there's just a few teams left, and keep in mind that all of the structures built out of rock are actually on moving glacier ice, so during the day the camp is kind of reverberating with rock walls that are falling over due to melting glacier movement.

By this fall, or certainly by next spring, there will be absolutely no trace of any of the construction projects that all the teams banded together to do to set up their base camps. So it's a little bit of a sad and melancholy atmosphere here right now. There are a few teams left, I say, here in Base Camp. There are a couple of celebrations going on from the summit, but the end of the season is definitely upon us, and probably the monsoon is shortly thereafter as well.

For our part, we're waiting for a couple of days for yaks and porters to come in, which we'll be busy packing on. All of our garbage and gear and supplies and everything came off the mountain, the last loads this morning, so we're relieved that none of our staff needs to go back and forth through the Icefall anymore. And within a couple of days we'll be wrapping it up and walking on out again towards Kathmandu and civilization and turning our backs on this spring of 2000 season here at Everest Base Camp.

It's always a happy and a sad thing when a good expedition is over because it's been a good time, but there are things in the future that we of course all need to get back to. So that's all from Willi for Everest Base Camp right now, and probably be giving you a couple of other updates as other interesting things happen.

We'll be having a party with all of our Sherpas down in Pheriche before all of the Sherpas also go their own way on the way out, and that should be a pretty good wingding down there with probably a little too much Chang and Rakshi consumed for our own good, but what else is new.

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

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