Berg Adventures 2013 Everest Expedition Dispatch

April 19, 2013 – Into the Valley of Silence

Yesterday, we got up at Camp I at 19,500ft. It was -20°C (-4°F) in the morning, very cold. We had breakfast around 6 am and we were moving by 7:30 am, it took us until a little past 11:30 am to get to Camp II at 21,500ft/6,553m. We were the only ones in the Western Cwm. The icefall below us or below camp I was unstable so no teams and no Sherpas have moved up.

It was a nice hike, although very, very tiring. It was amazing to have the entire Western Cwm to ourselves. I don’t think we’ll ever see that again on this trip.

We passed through many ladders over crevasses, and marched the way up 21,500ft and when we got here we were spent. It was just very depleting of our strength and we were quite tired. We made ourselves some hot tea and called it a day.

We’re resting now at 21,500ft for today. Tomorrow we’ll do a mile hike around camp into some high point and then Saturday we’ll move down and that will end our first rotation and we’ll have hopefully acclimatized 21,500ft and the next time we move up, we’ll move all the way up to Camp II.

– Steve Whittington

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