Valerio Massimo Everest Expedition 2009

 

Hi All, Alix here, as predicted in the last post. Before I begin I thought I should address the beard issue as it’s gaining such attention. Valerio had to shave the beard, despite the example of so many great adventurers, as there is a high chance of it freezing and interfering with his oxygen flow as he gets higher. So it wasn’t just vanity, or my insistence!

 

On to more mundane matters… this is a post in several different parts and timeframes. First we have the present, the 9:30am on the 17^th, when I know that Valerio made it safely through the dreaded Icefall and is on his way up to Camp 2, where he’ll be staying for two nights before continuing up to Camp 3, Camp 4, and then on to final summit push some time during the night of the 20/21^st.

 

 

Then I have what I wrote when I returned to my tent at 2:30am after an early wake up at 1:45 and excited, tense breakfast at 2am. The first group is 14 strong, including guides, and everyone was in good spirits as they left for the first step of the final stage of this long process:

 

2:30 am. Valerio just left; it was a somewhat spooky sight, headlamps glaring and fading in the darkness as owners did last checks on their gear, the only sounds hushed whispers and the clanking of d-clips. The night itself however was glorious – utterly clear and still after days and nights of continual storms, the crescent moon intensely bright, reflecting on the curve of the peaks around the camp. Billions of stars, looking much brighter and bigger than normal, littered the sky in unfamiliar places; the Big Dipper was very low in the sky and vertical. My tent suddenly seems huge; I take advantage of the space to sleep horizontally across the mats and away from a looming boulder which bothers me.

 

An hour later, I scrambled up a bit of the moraine to watch the trail of tiny headlamps making their way through the Icefall, witnessing a small avalanche which made sleeping for the rest of the night very hard.

 

Lastly, there is the note that Valerio wrote before he went to sleep last night:

 

Valerio, 8:30pm: If everything went to plan, I am in Camp 2 as you read this, having climbed through the Icefall and past Camp 1 last night and this morning.

 

We had an all-hands team meeting on the 14^th May, where Russell outlined his plans for the summit push.  There would be two teams, with summit days a number of days apart. I’m in Team 1, which leaves tonight at 2:30am. As usual, we’ll be woken by a Sherpa with a hot towel and ‘bed tea’, although this time we’ll  be whispering to try not to disturb the others as we hastily pull on the clothes, boots, and harnesses that we spent today checking and fixing.

 

For the past few days I have been getting ready.  Resting, eating as much as I can, and checking and re-checking equipment.  Today was final packing day, and I have been going through my equipment with a fine tooth comb. My inner boots, which look (according to Alix) like a child’s image of what a basketball-playing astronaut would wear (does that make sense to anyone at all?) have come to pieces, so I have used the most advanced technology known to man and mountaineer to fix them: duct tape. Lots of it. I was surprised to find out that I climbed Cho Oyu in them without any insoles, so have managed to find some from another pair of boots and transfer, with the luxurious new inclusion of battery-operated footwarmers,  But the main focus has been to get mentally prepared now that the dates were known.  This is it, the end game after all the time here at EBC and above and all the training in the year prior to my departure.

 

I write this as I lie in my tent on the evening of the 16^th May.  It is 8.30pm and I am getting up in a few hours to leave.  Now that the time has come I just want to get on with it.  As everyone says, the next seven days are going to be among the hardest of my life, but I feel as ready as I can be.

 

So this is my last post until I get back to Base Camp around the 25^th or 26^th.  I will take a Sat phone with me and Alix will post as I make my way up, and on summit night/day Alix will post my progress as I report down via radio.

 

For now – here we go! 

 

Over and out from EBC.

 

Back to Alix: So off he went, and now I’m left for a couple of days with the rest of the team before they too head off and EBC becomes a ghost camp for at least a week. The team are all strong so I’m confident but it’s certainly tense; over the last few weeks I’ve enjoyed getting to know all of the climbers and I desperately want them all to summit. Russell has strict turnaround times for summit day so anyone not reaching the designated points within, for example, five hours or ten hours and so on, will be turned around no matter how close to the summit, which could be painful.

 

Fingers, toes, elbows and knees crossed for Valerio and everyone on the mountain.

 

X from an emptier EBC.

PS Thank you for the comments, they are so appreciated in our splendid isolation!

 

 

 

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