At CBC (Chinese base camp) a run-away truck had crashed through the tents of an Italian expedition, completely wrecking their chances of reaching ABC (Advanced Base Camp) let alone the summit. The Italians were extremely lucky to get away with their lives, two of the members were still in their sleeping bags when the truck began to roll, and were only just able to crawl out of the tent in time. The truck wheels ran over their recently vacated sleeping bags. It was quite incomprehensible to us; the drivers had parked their vehicles uphill from (and pointing down at) the tents; no chocks under wheels; defective hand brakes. I cannot think whose's fault it was, but the extremely officious police officers tried to stop us taking photographs, they had no chance of course, and just made themselves look like power-obsessed little-men-in-uniforms. If they are to get people on their side they need a lesson from their PR department. Or maybe some-one elses.

For reasons that I will not explain (I don't understand them) we chose to spend four nights at CBC not two. Accordingly we made ambitious plans to pre acclimatise as much as possible. Just above the camp is a castle shaped outcrop of rock, we spent an enjoyable afternoon at the castle, rock climbing on a steep loose cliff; belaying well back to keep clear of the boulders that fell crashing into the scree at our feet. (For the technically minded the routes were: Loosifer; F6a and oncetherewasaroute; F6a) . Wim, our Vin Diesel clone, did his best to aid entropy, attempting to turn the castle back into sand.

Two days later we followed the ridge above camp to a knoll at 5900m where to our surprise and joy there was a gymnastic trapeze.

We all took turns to try pull-ups. When it was my turn I remembered why I don't do this kind of thing... asthmatics don't. I wheezed all the way back to the tents where our cook Sete had prepared another great meal. With fifteen opinionated climbers meal times were sometimes challenging, but always entertaining. Here are a couple of examples;

One eveing Ben told us how he had observed the Coriolis effect a few metres either side of the equator. It had been shown to him, a bucket with a hole in it, the water spiralling out clockwise north of the line and anti-clock south. Spend a little time on the math and you will come to the conclusion that the difference in velocity either side of the bucket (which is what drives the spiral one way or the other) is of the order of ten to the minus ten, plus or minus a zero. Now this is a very small difference, certainly far too small to be effective outside near laboratory conditions. But, and this is the thing, Ben is such a lovely, engaging person that I would rather be wrong that tell him he had been conned. So, I guess I will have to do the math again.

On another occasion Doug (the immaculately dressed Doug, who was still looking like he was on a business trip) casually reflected on the prevalence of the CF (Cystic Fibrosis) gene in North Europeans. "How prevalent?" I asked. "Oh about 1 in 20". Hmmm, that means 1 in 400 chance of two carriers mating; which means 1 in 1600 chance of inheriting both genes, the actual figure of 1 in 1000 probably reflects multiple matings. "So" I asked "if 1 per thousand dies young from CF, what is the advantage to the other 49?" "Tuberculosis" he replied. "The single gene confers resistance to TB. It is analogous to sickle cell anaemia and malaria". "Oh". I went to bed wondering if the 1 in 20 figure is tied to the mortality of TB. If TB was more fatal, or more quickly fatal, would the incidence of CF be higher? And the corollary? I snuggled deep into my sleeping bag scribbling sums; but got nowhere fast other than to sleep.

On 11 September our team arrived at ABC, 5700m. This is high for a base, though not as high the base on the North side of Everest at 6400m, we were still near the top of Elbrus, a thousand metres higher than Mont Blanc. There we met up with our Sherpas, who had already set up the camp for us. Gurmin, Thundu and Padawa were old friends, some of the strongest high altitude climbers in the world. They were joined by Namgyal from Khumbu and Pema and Chimi from Tibet. Lakhpa and Sete were cooking, Tashi from Tingri assisted in the kutchen. We were all set. The fifteen of us broke up into smaller teams to acclimatise, but when we returned to base, to our large communal mess tent, the conversations continued as before. One of the Lost Tribe, Guy, was planning to ski the mountain. He appeared to be training for this by smoking twenty cigarettes a day. This provoked the following exchange;

David the Anaesthetist (Anesthesiologist in American): "Someone needs to tell Guy that smoking like that is not the best way to train for your first eight thousand metre peak."
Doug (radiologist and surgeon): "Well, it can increase your Hematocrit, but you probably need to give up two weeks before climbing."
David (suddenly looking concerned) : "Oh... is it too late to start, then?"
Guy exits smirking. Smoke drifts in through the tent door. Meanwhile my good friend Katie Moore began to bang her head on the table. We had a surfeit of doctors and this was one medical conversation too many. She had mild backache, and said what she really needed was not doctors but a Reiki Healing [1] or laying on of hands.
Victor: "I can do that."
Katie. "No, you don't believe in it."
Victor. "But I've read the web site. It says it works whether or not you believe!"
Katie. "Go away and leave me alone, you'll only pass on negative energy!"

We began to acclimatise by visiting C1 (6400m). At about 6000m there was a small crowd round a collpased man. He had just had a stroke and his right side was paralysed. Minutes later Luis and his Adventure Consultants team turned up, and they helped organise the rescue. The victim was carried down to the the twenty strong medical team and then out to the road the next day. These days there seems to be a presumption to recommend aspirin to everyone who goes to altitude, and in the case of this stroke victim at least, our gaggle of medics agreed, it would not have done too much harm. That was probably not the case with our colleague, and polar walker, Tom Avery who had been already taking aspirin. He developed a blind spot right in the centre of his vision. There was an ophthalmologist with the team of twenty medics who said it was a haemorage behind his macula lutea, whatever that is. It appears that taking aspirin would definitly not have helped. In fact it had probably made it worse. The medics all agreed that Tom had to go down. Bo, a skier in our extended expedition, decided to read a poem in Tom's honour after he left. It was sweet and touching, but to an Englishman... excruciating. A few days later the ophthalmologist also developed retinal haemorages, and after resisting the inevitable pressure from his colleagues for three days, eventually he too agreed to go home. The final word on aspirin and altitude would appear to be: Unless you already taking them, then no. Not until you are over the trip and your way out, then take them in small doses for a couple of weeks.

On 16 September Russel Brice, searching the mountain with a telescope, noticed strange tracks in the snow above C3, consistent with some kind of accident or fall. No one was reported missing, no expeditions report activity so high up the mountain. Yet there were the tracks. It was a mystery. That day our group of five set off for C1 and C2 (7150m) to complete our last cycle of acclimatising. Four days later, as we returned to base, the snows arrived. It snowed for four days, on the last day of snow, on the night of 24 April, around 50 cms of snow fell. We spent the morning digging out our tents and listening to snippets from the world service. While it snowed here, Bangladesh had it's worst floods since 1988. Millions of poor people were displaced, crops un-planted because of the waters, 280 deaths with more to come from desease and malnutrition. It put our travails in perspective. We were to spend the next week arguing about the safety of the mountain. It had snowed heavily. The winds were forecast to blow from the south over the north face, and we reasoned that this would make for dangerously loaded windslab. It was 26 September, and I was almost alone in arguing that we should just call off the trip and go home. By 28 September I had changed my mind. The wind seemed to have been strong enough to blow the loose snow clear of the mountain, maybe that was why there was so much down here in the valley, and also the forecast was now for three days of low wind starting on 1 October. When asked I replied "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"[2]

On 29 September we set out for C1 reaching C2 early in the afternoon of 30 September. The same day Sete walked down to CBC to go back to Kathmandu. He had been running a temperature and nothing the doctors did seemed to help. Our plan was now to leave C2 at midnight, avoiding the traditional C3 at 7400m and going straight for the summit. At C2 we dozed in the afternoon, and at 8:30pm, half asleep, I misread my watch, pulled on my boots, staggered over to the tent of Dave,Sam, Doug and Wim and was still shaking their flysheet when a dazed Wim said..."Victor... it is only 8:30!" "Oh shit, oh all right. Sorry." Sheepishly I crept back to my sleeping bag.

The night climbing at midnight was wonderful. Nightclimbing always is. For hours we were cosseted in our own pool of light. In the distance, like fireflies, the headtorches of other climbers flickered up and down the slopes. By dawn we were close to 8000m. By 7:30am we were on top. Everest was to our east, the west side of the mountain in shadow. From Cho Oyu you can see both the north ridge and the south col routes. You can see down into Khumbu and Gokyo and further round, Shishapengma. Way over there, behind Shishapenma the Tibetan plains stretch for a thousand kilometres to the Taklamakhan desert and Xinjiang. For David, Sam, Wim and Doug, it was the first 8000m peak. Quite an achievement.

Our ascent had been without incident, but on the way down David pointed a shaking hand. Sam and I looked down to see an orange figure sliding towards the band of cliff above C3. As we watched the figure began to roll, then like a rag doll, flipped over and tumbled over the cliff. I felt slightly sick. David went quiet. Doug and Wim witnessed the start of the fall. It was a Chinese man, he had tripped, made a grab for the fixed rope, and missed. The snow was hard, and though not steep, offered no resistance to sliding. The man fell over 300m, that is a thousand feet, yet at C3 we found he had not died after after all. Far from it. Doug did a preliminary inspection, borrowing a knife to slice open the down trousers. The faller had no head or back injuries. The only thing wrong appeared to be a twisted knee and a sprained ankle. And sliced up down pants. It was extraordinary.

Twelve Chinese and Tibetans made a temporary stretcher from foam mats and rope and hauled him down to C1. On 2 October we were nearing ABC when we met up with the Sino-Tibetan group. The Falling Man was now walking and pleased to see Doug. Somehow he seemed to attribute his recovery in part to our Doug. The major part of his luck , though, was due to a visit to a buddhist temple in Lhasa before starting on the expedition. "My name is Wang Feng!" he said. "Feng means mountain in Chinese. The mountain has given me a new life! Now I am starting on my new life!" I asked him what he was going to do with his new life. "I will go to the temple and ask!" And later, with a strangely appropriate prescience, he sent Doug a case of beer.

The news was not so good at base camp. Several climbers had witnessed a very distressing spectacle on 30 September. Several figures were seen making for the Nangpa La (5700m) when a military group started shooting at them. One fell down, but rose again. Another fell and was left there till the next day. There were several rumours about what was going on, but one thing that was abundantly clear was that from ABC the witnesses were a kilometre away from the action, and could not have identified anyone with any certainty. An hour after the shooting a herd of load carrying yaks were brought over the La from Nepal.

As my friend Ed Douglas says, the yak herders had probably paid the correct amount of bakshish. Some papers carried the story that the victim was a 25 year old nun. Other sources suggest there may have been an incompetent attempt to smuggle children out of Tibet. None of that could have been corroborated by witnesses. More bad news was to follow. On arrival in Kathmandu we found that Sete, our cook, had collapsed with encephalitis. He is currently paralised down one side and wiill be in hospital for a while. We have started a fund to care for him, but most of all I hope and pray he recovers his health.

In June I had flown to Canada with United Airlines who I note from a web site run by other unhappy passengers had over 4000 letters of complaint and managed to reply to just 66 [3]. So I don't feel too bad about my thirty phone calls, five letters and and four faxes, all without a letter in reply. It is companies like UA that make travelling a truly unpleasant experience. From Kathmandu to London I flew PIA. What a relief it is to fly with a responsive and helpful airline, who not only make a habit of returning your phone calls but also able to keep your baggage with you. I shall be using them when we set out for Everest next spring. Meanwhile the next blog will be from Chamonix.

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[1] see www.reiki.org/FAQ/WhatIsReiki.html "Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing. It is administered by "laying on hands" and is based on the idea that an unseen "life force energy" flows through us and is what causes us to be alive."
[2] this quote is usually attributed to John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), but I have not found the origin
[3] see www.untied.com