NFB 2001 Everest Expedition (Didrik Johnck, 05-11-2001)

EVEREST LIVE

May 11, 2001

From: Didrik Johnck

Mingma grinds coffee using power from our solar panels. Photo Jonathan Chester/Extreme Images.

[ALT]

After learning that the team would be delayed yet another day from climbing the mountain, Didrik has a minor nervous breakdown in the love dome.
Photo Jonathan Chester/Extreme Images.

[ALT]

With half the team at Camps 1 and 2, and a fierce storm raging outside, the rest of the team in base camp makes a difficult decision to remain in base camp.
Photo Jonathan Chester/Extreme Images.

[ALT]

One of the doors on the Coms tent looks out on BC . Photo Jonathan Chester/Extreme Images.

Well it's one of those hurry up and wait days. After rushing around yesterday getting my act together for going up the mountain for our summit attempt the brakes were applied this morning by the weather. My alarm clock went off this morning at 4 am. The sound of driving snow against my wind pressed tent was the first thing that greeted my senses. I shouted to Brad, in the next tent over, what he was thinking. Screw this. He said, Let's wait a few hours and if the storm lets up then we'll go. That sounded fine to me as I immediately fell back asleep. The next sound that greeted me was that of my tent fly slowly ripping apart. A few weeks ago a yak train went wild in our camp and almost took out my tent. Fortunately the damage was only to the tent fly and not the body. After a roll of duct tape the tent fly was more or less whole. But last night in the face of the howling wind, the duct tape relented, and as I awoke at 7 the tent fly was in the process of flying away.

We've been in Nepal almost 45 days now and I've been living among the rock, snow, ice, dry air, and yak dung for over 30 days. It's starting to wear on my. Every day I wake up and look up the icefall and wonder when the hell I'm going to have my chance. When is our summit window going to appear? It looked like there might be one on the 14th, however, it was the size of a mail slot. Charley commented to me today about acquiring an important trait of a Himalayan mountaineer and that's the ability to do the base camp hang. Meaning the ability to not rush for the summit, be patient, and waiting in base camp day after day after day, and then hopefully the mountain weather will relent a bit and let us run up and tag the summit. Day after day with the same people, same faces, same foul smells. Watching your teammates go through all various stages of sickness and health. Walking out of the dining tent to see someone bent over a rock tossing the lunch they just ate because of some bacteria that was in the food. When does it all stop? I can't fully describe my desire to get out of base camp and head up the mountain.

Webmaster E-mail :
URL: https://2001everest.com