Big Brothers Big Sisters Everest Base Camp Trek Dispatch

May 17, 2010 – Success on Everest and Our Trek Down to Namche

This is Leila Silveira reporting from Namche Bazaar. Today was a really exciting day for our trekking team and especially for our climbing team.

We went to bed last night knowing that the Berg Adventures climbing team, Jamie Clarke, Scott Simper, and five Sherpas, had spent their second night at the South Col waiting for a good weather window to attempt their summit.

I know for sure that I could barely sleep from excitement and I am sure that Wally Berg, Charlie Stack, Allison Norton-Rimron, Stephanie Pearson and Kenny Wilson were also sleepless at Base Camp.

I was scheduled to have radio contact with Base Camp at 7am but at 6:45am I was too anxious and tried to reach them. I got hold of Wally who told me that Jamie and Scott thought the weather looked good and were on their way to the summit.

One hour later they were at the South Summit, which is located at 28,700ft/8,750m. I quickly woke up George, Jamie's best friend from childhood who was hiking with us, and told him to join me outside to follow the updates from Jamie and also from Wally Berg talking to Jamie and their Sherpa team.

Soon the whole group was awake and outside waiting and following the updates. We knew that the weather was good and they were moving strong, therefore the summit call should happen soon.

When it did, we all screamed at the same time as we heard Jamie’s calm, strong voice announcing to the world that they had reached the summit of Everest.

We knew that Jamie wished to talk with George so we waited a little bit to see if we had a clear connection. Unfortunately it was too difficult to get hold of Jamie from our location in Pheriche, so we decided to start our hike down to Namche. We'd make a stop at Ang Temba’s house in Pangboche where Ang Tshering ( Ang Temba’s wife) had a stronger radio and hopefully we could get hold of him there.

We were not aware that Doug , one of our trekking team members, had left earlier with Min, our trekking guide, and Min also had a radio with him and was listening to the entire summit call.

Doug didn’t think twice, he seized the moment and looking up at Everest, took a photograph of it at the exact moment that Jamie was calling from the summit. He knew that up there was Jamie and our team.

We all hiked excitedly with the news and before we knew it, we were all at Pangboche and George was able to have a long talk with Jamie just as he arrived at the South Summit and was taking a break.

That same night, at Pangboche, Ang Temba’s horse had a baby and Ang Tshering asked me to give the little pony a name. What better name than “Summit”? The horse went into labour at the same time as our team started their summit push!

After a fantastic fresh mint tea prepared by Ang Tshering, we all hit the trail again. We all arrived at different times at Punchi Tenga for our lunch stop and after lunch, we set off on the trail together again.

We also arrived at different times at Namche but we all had the same thing in mind: a warm night at lower altitude, a long shower in the privacy of our rooms and a rest day tomorrow.

We learned through the radio that Jamie and Scott had arrived safely back at the South Col. Their plan was, after a good night's sleep, to start their climb down tomorrow towards base camp where everyone was anxious to see them. Keep in mind that the South Col is not a friendly place, so getting back all the way down is at the forefront of everyone’s minds.