April
1999
THIRD POLE EXPEDITION
April
- June 1999
Saturday 24th
April 1999
40º
C in the shade…
A few brief items of news from the base camp on Everest,
on the Tibetan side. Virtually all of the expeditions planning to
come to the mountain have arrived, bringing the number of climbers,
sherpas and others aiming to make the climb to around a hundred people.
"No problem, says Belgian mountaineer Pascal Debrouwer.
Since we were among the first to arrive - along with the Americans
and the Ukrainians - we have a spot some distance away and so are
not caught up in the comings and goings of the people who have just
arrived."
"Fortunately, we got here early," continues Alain
Hubert, "because while down here, overcrowding is not too much
of a problem, as Pascal has just said, at the advanced base camp,
it's more of a problem because space is at a premium…"
We now know a little more about the initial forays by the Belgians
in the upper reaches of the giant mountain. Hubert and Manaram went
up with Pascal Debrouwer and Joao Garcia, the Portuguese guide who
has been helping Pascal for a number of years in organising commercial
expeditions for Montagnes du Monde. The four men get on like a house
on fire, which cannot be said to be the case elsewhere on the mountain,
because there has already been a hoo-ha between some Russian and Swiss
climbers who got into an argument about where to pitch their tents!
But like we said, the Belgians have ventured as high as 7 800 metres;
no-one has been any higher. When they reached this height, Hubert
caught a chill that was as sudden as it was serious. "My hands
started shaking," he confessed to us - which is quite something
for a man who has crossed the Antarctic. So the four companions came
back down to base camp. Suffering from a bad cold and with a temperature,
Alain has lost his voice and is on antibiotics. He estimates he will
have to wait for a week at least before being fully recovered and
able to climb again.
Apart from that, the men's morale is set fair. It has to be said that
at this altitude (5 200 m), the temperature climbs to around 40ºC
during the day, before plummeting to -10ºC at night. These variations
in temperature are not designed to help climbers who catch a chill…
