My travel diaries
Sunday 6 May, 2007 - Changtse Base Camp, Everest North Side
At breakfast this morning I remark that it would be nice if for once our packed lunches contain a bar of chocolate instead of a hard-boiled egg. No more than five seconds later at the most, our cook Kaji turns up with the packed lunches containing, wait for it, a bar of chocolate instead of a hard-boiled egg. This is seen as a miracle by my companions and yet more evidence that I am in fact a Buddhist monk with special powers. In fact, this time it is concluded that I must be the Dalai Lama himself, despite the fact that we happen to be in Tibet, a place the Dalai Lama can't venture without getting arrested by the Chinese government. For some reason Mic then decides to ask me if he can have a donkey for Christmas. I have to explain that if I'm not the Dalai Lama I'm certainly not Father Christmas instead, and in any case, he doesn't need a donkey and should cast aside his craving for material things as that is the route to suffering. This doesn't help stifle the rumours.
After breakfast we sit about watching the yak herders divide up their loads. No scales are involved in this process to ensure an equal distribution, though much wild gesticulation, tossing about of bags and drawing of lots appears to be essential. It is certainly entertaining to watch, though when Bunter suggests removing the badminton racquets from his day pack (don't ask - I think he's hoping to become the first person to have a game of badminton on the North Col) and adding them to the yak loads, we have to intervene, as we feel it would probably tip the finely balanced negotiation and at best result in the whole process starting again from scratch, or at worst, violence.
We get away at 9.15 and it turns out to be a fantastic day's walking. We begin by plodding slowly over moraine with steep rock either side of us but no great views. Then, later in the morning, the glacier veers to the right as we pass another campsite, and we see Everest much closer straight ahead of us. Now we are walking on the "Magic Highway", an easy path of moraine straight up the middle of the East Rongbuk Glacier, which enables yaks to be taken all the way to Advanced Base Camp (ABC) across wildly pinnacled ridges of otherwise impassable glacier. The 1924 expedition team gave this particular stretch of the approach the name via dolorosa ('painful way'), but I'm finding it truly magical.
When we stop for lunch we have a discussion about glacial nomenclature. Some people have been calling these ice pinnacles "penitentia" as similar formations of ice are known in Argentina. These formations tend to be about the height of a man and resemble penitent monks walking with their heads bowed. I argue that the ice pinnacles we are seeing today are much bigger and formed in a very different way. While the penitentia can form in a single season, and are created by the action of wind over newly fallen snow, these pinnacles are formed by the pressure of the glacier crushing its ice into ridges as it gradually flows down the valley. Eventually we settle for the term "sharks' fins", a name of our own devising.
At the start of the Magic Highway I get some interesting video footage of yaks leaping over a crack in the ice. We spread out into single file an hour or more apart as we continue up the Highway for a few hours. Camp 2, Changtse Base Camp, is at 6085m by my altimeter, and is in a spectacular setting. We have an ice lake next to us with sharks' fins as a backdrop, and Changtse, a 7500m outlying peak of Everest rising up opposite. Again the yaks, resting in front of the ice lake, are begging to be photographed. This will be the first time I have ever slept above 6000m. Later in the afternoon while lying in my tent getting some rest, I decide to get up and visit the toilet tent, only to find a yak standing right outside our tent door. I have only about a metre of space to manouevre myself out of there, but the yak isn't at all concerned. He isn't moving, anyway.
At the toilet tent I make a mental note to keep my fingers crossed that nobody has a bout of the shits at this particular campsite. There isn't a great deal of depth available.
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