May 12 - Meeting Friends Along the Way

Listen to Audio of Wally's Call (.wav)

This call is coming to you from Eco Lodge at Loboche at 16,000 ft (4,877m). We are right next to the Lateral Moraine of the Khumbu Glacier and I’m looking up at an empowering sunlit Nuptse at over 25,000 ft (7,620m) directly above me. We don’t see Everest from here but we are adjacent to the Khumbu Glacier and we really feel the presence of Everest Base Camp in the mountain above us.

Since we arrived here at Loboche we have seen a lot of friends coming down from base camp, some of the climbers going down to rest. We’ve also seen sherpas reporting teams that have started up the mountain. We in particular enjoyed sitting with my old friend Luanne Freer who runs the clinic at Everest Base Camp. After several weeks of operation she has left it into the care of a couple other physicians as she is heading home to Bozeman, Montanta now. It was great catching up with her and hearing stories about the season thus far which have gone remarkably well. Teams were getting along well, people staying healthy, no major problems so far.

Now it is time to get started with the climbing so we are really happy to be where we are in support of Will Cross and a lot of other friends going up the mountain. Tomorrow we are going to move up to Gorak Shep at 16,800 ft (5,120m) where we will be walking up along the edge of the Khumbu Glacier the whole way. We will camp there a couple of nights and hopefully if we can stay strong and acclimatize we’ll ascend to the very top of Kala Patar at over 18,000 feet (5,486m) and have a peak climbing experience of our own before we head into Everest Base Camp on the 15th.

Previous | Menu | Next

---