Valerio Massimo Everest Expedition 2009

Yesterday morning we left Tengboche, at 3,950 meters, to move up to Dingboche, at 4,400 meters.  Tengboche is famous for its monastery, where all expeditions to Everest are blessed for good luck by the local Llama.  The Llama performed a simple ceremony and we were each given scarves, which most people tied to their rucksacks.  Every expedition to Everest since the Swiss in 1952 and the British in 1953 have done the same.

After the ceremony we caught our first view of Everest, soaring nearly 5,000 meters above us.  Its tip was just visible above the long ridge of its sister peak, Nuptse.  We’ll have to wait until we get onto the Khumbu glacier proper before we get a fuller view, but it was good to see the mountain again for the first time since 2004.

After final packing and re-loading of yaks for the umpteenth time, we hit the trail, and Everest slowly dipped out of view behind the ridge as walked towards it.  Bypassing the traditional overnight stop at Pangboche, we had a sunny lunch instead at a tea house in Upper Pangboche before continuing the staggeringly beautiful undulating traverse along the mountain-side.  Throughout, one very famous mountain dominated the scenery – Ama Dablam – perhaps alongside the Matterhorn the most beautiful mountain in the world, but still 2,000 meters short of Everest’s height at almost 7,000 meters.  It made me realise as I craned my neck to look up at it just how much higher we have to go.  Very humbling indeed.

I arrived in Dingboche just after 2pm and spent the rest of the day lazing in the sunshine waiting for the yaks to arrive.  As we sat down to dinner last night, I realised how many people on the team have become ill, with either dodgy stomachs or the much more dangerous chest virus that is being passed around, exacerbated by the inevitable ‘Khumbu cough’ which is caused  by exposure to the dust and extremely dry air up here.  So far I am OK but since we all eat together in warm and squashed dining rooms people are beginning to wear face masks or bandanas – if you catch it is hard to shake at this altitude and can easily develop into pneumonia – and that means the end of your expedition.  The irony is that the team doctor brought the virus into Kathmandu and now at least ten people have caught it – she certainly now has her work cut out.  I’m doing my best to avoid it but up here hygiene is not a priority…

Speaking of hygiene, today is laundry day as we are not trekking but acclimatising to the big jump in altitude.  I also had my first shower in a week and feel like a different person, although I have kept the beard despite the attempts at vote rigging by one of my friends, who oddly, has a beard himself – perhaps he is worried I am stealing his look.  No worries there, for that, I’d have to wear a YSL ‘foulard’ in the Caribbean sun in 35 degree heat (now that’s dedication to pointless accessorising).  Don’t worry my friend, your unique camp look is safe (third and last shout out BTW).  The only camps up here are full of tents…

Tomorrow we move up past Lobuche, which is a notorious hell hole of a place and the filthiest village in the region, to our team’s Lobuche Base Camp at 4,950 meters.  So this is my last night sleeping in a building – however ramshackle – from now until June it will be tents all the way.

This MAY be my last post until Base Camp as Lobuche BC is in a valley and there is no certainty of connection, but Alix will post in my absence if that happens as she did while I was in Khumjung with the same problem.  Fingers crossed, once we arrive at Everest Base Camp proper on the 9^th April and set everything up it should be fine, but you never know with technology…

So we are getting closer to the actual action.  For the few trekkers accompanying us Base Camp is the end of their journey, but for us, it just the beginning.  Beautiful as it has been, we have just been moving up to the starting line.

Everest's summit ridge pokes above the Nuptse ridge - our first view

The stunning Ama Dablam from the trail to Dingboche

The famous Tengboche monastery

Me in front of the Tengboche bakery with Everest behind

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Horse browsing in Namche

Me on my way out of Namche as the clouds roll-in

 

Me on the steps of the Everest View Hotel in the mist

Everest legend Phurba Tashi and his son in the lodge kitchen

Khumjung is where a lot of the original work done by the charity I am supporting – The Himalayan Trust – was started by Edmund Hillary. Here he built the first school and the first hospital in the entire region, and the continuing works are wonderful to see. Infrastructure and most importantly education are what the Sherpa people want, so that their children won’t have to either till the fields or perform dangerous work on high altitude expeditions such as mine. It really is a worthy cause as they are such generous, charming and hard working people.

We spent two days in Khumjung acclimatising to the increased altitude, staying at the ‘Tashi Friendship lodge ‘, owned by our Sirdar Phurba Tashi. Phurba is a legend in the Himalaya and one of the strongest althetes I’ve ever seen. He has climbed Everest a staggering 14 times and is a national hero, but also, as I witnessed over two days, an adoring father of four children. A rather effete friend of mine whined when I said he was as famous a David Beckham in Nepal, only difference being that he is actually talented. To be fair Phurba doesn’t care much for Alexander McQueen’s latest skinny jeans or Balenciaga new leather jacket, so perhaps that is the reason for the gripe (my friend works in fashion, hawking expensive clothes to rich old bags in NY – second shout out BTW).

Our stay was very cosy, with very much a family atmosphere as the entire extended sherpa family knew many of the guides and we all squeezed into a very ‘cosy’ dining room for long chats, reading books by the fire and lots of games of ‘arsehole’, not the most cerebral of card games, but simple and fun when there are ten of you playing.

On Friday I spent some time playing football with the local children and then trekked up to the ‘Everest View Hotel’. This is a very weird place, built by the Japanese in the 1960s and with a very depressing feel about it – like a mini version of the hotel in ‘The Shining’. It was built for time-pressed and typically older Japanese tourists to come and see Everest without any effort (it is the lowest point from which you can glimpse the tip of Everest, thumnail-sized as it pokes over the Nuptse ridge). At 3,700 meters many early customers would get off the helicopter at the specially built landing strip at Syanboche and exclaim ‘Ahh, Evverest’ before promtly keeling over from the altitude. Many went straight from heli to oxygen chamber and at least four died, so it was closed down. In 1997 I visited the abandoned building for a picnic. Now it has re-opened but to be honest it doesn’t look very different. I asked the waiter (once I found one) how many guests they had and he said ‘none’. I asked if there were hot showers, given this place charges $160 per night and our cosy lodge $3, and he said ‘no, just hot water bucket’. I wonder why it isn’t more popular…

This morning we left Khumjung to trek to Tengboche, the site of the local monastery. My year in the gym seems to be paying off and I made the five hour journey, including the 700 vertical meter climb, in an hour and a half. So far soo good – touch wood it stays this way. My main aim is to get to Base Camp without getting ill. Fingers crossed.

Arriving early and with time to kill, I began playing with my equipment and disaster struck. I lost all the photos I have taken since arriving in Nepal, bar the four attached to this post. Long boring story, involving my PDA re-formatting my memory card, apparently for fun. Bastard. And I was just about to back it all up…

So I am begging some of the shots I’ve lost off others to try and re-create something of the trip so far. That’ll teach me to have too much technology…

Tomorrow we are off to Dingboche, and another rise to well over four thousand meters. Getter closer…only 5 days to Base Camp.

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My turn for a very quick note, as Valerio’s stuck without a connection in Khumjung.

While Valerio’s been gallivanting around playing with his satellite phone and (to paraphrase Paul- shout out #1) curling his eyelashes at various hill stations on the way to Base Camp, I’ve been continuing to gather all the things he still needs here in London and getting them shipped out by yakmail to arrive in Base Camp before he does. The main bulk of it has been a very specific energy drink which his double-Iron Man-running teammate uses and Valerio is now convinced will be the wind beneath his wings. He’d previously been relying on Red Bull and tortellini.

So, assuming this would be easy, I set out to track down this drink and eventually discovered that it is sold by only one distributor in the whole UK, in Penrhyndeudraeth (I kid you not), Wales. So I have been arranging a delivery from Penrhyndeudraeth to Pengboche via a number of other places all in need of some serious vowel culling, which involved a lot of phone calls consisting of P-for-Pappa, E for echo… and so on, ad infinitum. I’m desperately hoping it won’t all end up in Pengzhou.

But the deed is done, the box is sent (again in charge of the mysterious Man Named Zav in his white van) and I can finally turn to getting myself ready for my own trip out- I’ve discovered most of my kit consists of Valerio’s leftovers so expect lots of pictures of me looking lost at Base Camp in oversized hand-me-downs.

But for now, it’s my last weekend in civilisation (or London anyway) so I’m off to enjoy this sunshine…

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