Everest 2003: Ben Clark
Dispatch

Dispatch 16, April 19, 2003: Intermediate Camp, 18,500’

The climb began today.  Rising out of our gravel pit basecamp we made our way to an intermediate camp at 18,500’, halfway to our main staging area Advanced Basecamp. It was a six mile hike above 16,400’ with yaks carrying our gear.

Today was very fun although the terrain was more suitable to a yak foot than my own. What made it fun was sharing all the bumps and sharp edges of the world’s youngest rock with friends of mine from around the world and from America.  Most importantly, I ran into twenty-one year-old Jess Roskelley after a year and a half of climbing around the world.  He was on his way down to basecamp, sitting alongside the trail with his climbing partner, his father, American climbing legend, John Roskelley. 

Jess is twenty-one, two years younger than me and that means we are competing over the same record for the Youngest American to climb Everest.  Put us together and you would never even know.  A year and a half had passed and when Jess and I saw each other immediately we started laughing. We had some great times hanging out and climbing together on Mount Rainier a few years back and we both recounted the same story of when he once opened a stink bomb by accident in my car and I still have a stain on the console from it.  We laugh too much too be rivals, we love life and climbing too much to care about records.  I will enjoy sharing the experience of climbing Everest with Jess, he truly is a talented and future leader of my generation of climbers.  We are already planning a route to do together next summer.

After the break and catching up with Jess we resumed our walk toward our camp that night at 18,500’.  It is a brilliant spot. Standing along the sandy serpent like spine of the rocky moraine of the Rongbuk glacier I watched creamy orange light dapple fingers of rock as it receded to become someone else’s day.  That is as grand a valley as the approach to the world’s highest mountain and most attractive forces truly is.

Keep Dreaming, Ben Clark

Dispatch 17, April 20, 2003 : Advanced Base Camp, 21,000’

I awoke this morning to thunder, the orchestration of forty-six freezing yak-bells, and the hushing pattern of a wet Himalayan snow.  Although it was a rough and frozen start, we made it to Advanced Basecamp.

The final stretch of this twelve and a half mile walk to the staging area of our climb is as breathtaking as traversing the edges of a Sharks mouth.  The walk is a gentle ascent but very few ascents that are of such high mileage and high altitude are as rewarding to the eye.  On either side of the rocky worm-like moraine are 60’ to 80’ fins of ice that prominently cap the sky.  There are row after row of them for miles until you finally sweep alongside a craggy peak at 21,000’ and settle into the nights atmosphere of bright tent-lights and over 200 Everest climbers.   

This is where you must be careful, although many prefer to spend weeks at this altitude, it is a fine line between increasingly growing acclimatized, adjusted to the altitude, and wasting away into atrophy as your body eats it’s own mass.

Keep Dreaming, Ben Clark

Dispatch 18, April 21, 2003’: Advanced Base Camp, 21,000’

This is the high desert, 21,000’ and not a drop of water that isn’t melted.  Temperatures here will see the breath you breathe all night plaster a shimmering layer of frost inside your tent and a bright white light that will bake the underside of your nose faster than a strip of bacon in a southern frying pan. That is a lot to consider when you want to know what to wear outside for a day of resting. 

Although it was a rest day, it is standard to take many of these when climbing a peak of this scale, this doesn’t mean you can’t explore a little bit.  Two hundred feet higher and underfoot a gleaming icy glacier and my patchy under-grown beard was filled with ice and whatever my sinuses felt like releasing. Welcome to Everest I thought, with the busted tooth I got from the first days hard fried potatoes, the patchy beard and the squinty infected left eye, I already knew this was no place for the vain!  That is all part of the human element of exploration. Although the terrain was very exciting, more people could get a chuckle out of looking at me then at the approaching snowstorm. 

Could I possible care?  Of course not, we all undergo some funny transformation when we are expeditioning, it lets us step outside the lines and beyond the normal role of house to car to office to car to house.   Can’t live inside the bubble forever, plus it gives me, a pretty clean cut type A, the opportunity to laugh at myself more than usual!

Keep Dreaming, Ben Clark

Dispatch 19, April 22, 2003: Advanced Base Camp, 21,000’

My production Assistant, Jon Miller, who is living at base-camp for the duration of the expedition and doing his best to understand why I climb these peaks would have enjoyed catching me on camera today.  After countless hours of production meetings, and the filming of much of the process of this journey, Jon says he has never seen me sit and do nothing.  That is all I did today.

Many climbers would say that the absence of activity, of a vehicle, of anything but scenery is what makes a sixty-day expedition like this the most critical and difficult time.  Imagine a world with no television, no cell-phones, no video games, and no reason to even be awake other than to eat.  Everything changes here, the day starts with the sunrise, it ends with the moon lapping a ridgeline. Time only has meaning when we are on the mountain moving towards a camp or when a storm is approaching. We sit and wait or we are climbing upward and working harder than we have ever physically pushed in our lives.  That is what makes climbing Everest such a committing endeavor: the contrast of up and down, night and day, of exertion and relaxation.  It can be both the most exhaustive effort in your entire life and the most relaxing time you have ever had. 

Keep Dreaming, Ben Clark

Dispatch 20, April 23, 2003, North Col, 23,000’+

Today I climbed the first section of the mountain.  This section is a direct line up to a ridge that sweeps down off the upper portions of Mount Everest.  It leads to a place called the North Col, our first camp on Mount Everest and above 23,000’.

Weaving up the jagged and blocky snow and ice of this section of the route is tricky. We carried light packs since this was our first ascent to the Col and we have to make two trips.  This is the standard way to climb a peak such as Everest. We will visit each camp and stock it with gear before climbing to the camp a second time to sleep.  Although it is twice as much work, it allows our bodies to adjust to the altitude and hopefully grow stronger as well as insure we have the proper provisions for a lengthy stay in weather.

Today’s trip worked me harder than a cash register the day after Thanksgiving.  Step, breathe, step, heave.  Every fifteen feet there would be a pile of snow that I would focus on and give my full effort towards reaching.  This is how painstaking the effort of climbing an 8000 meter peak is, it is more than one foot in front of the other, it is knowing every fifteen feet exactly where you will be heading.  When you get there, you must plot another point and peck away piece by piece. 

When I got to the camp, I chugged some Tang and demolished a Honey bun, a sign that I was going to be alright!  We then descended and will have another rest day tomorrow. I am going to have to work harder and push myself further than I have ever tried every day I set foot on the mountain.  If that is what it takes, all I can and will do is give it my best!

Keep dreaming, Ben Clark 

Dispatch 21, April 21, 2003’: Advanced Base Camp, 21,000’

Today was another rest day, well deserved, and a day where doing nothing was fantastic! Tomorrow we will leave for a two night stay at the North Col.

Keep dreaming, Ben Clark

Dispatch 22, April 25, 2003’ North Col, 23,000+

Another day of hard work, this time rewarded by a night of sleep higher than any mountain outside of Asia.  We made it up the North Col once again and are preparing for an ascent to over 25,000’ tomorrow morning.

Keep Dreaming, Ben Clark

Dispatch 23, April 25, 2003, North Col 23,000’+

Today I set a new personal altitude record, 25,000’+.  It was a struggle but the most rewarding time of the expedition. It was a constant battle with many small victories. Nothing is like working hard at high altitude.

Laboring from early morning until the afternoon I had a great time.  Every step was like lifting a 500 lb. weight up to my chest but in reality it was more like lifting my foot 8” and taking two breathes per step.  Each step would seem like an eternity.

I am climbing at this altitude without supplemental oxygen and it is the most fascinating sensation I have ever encountered.   Sometimes I would look west to 26,900’ Cho Oyu and it would seem as if it were at eye level. I would look east and there would be nothing but a barren brown desert beyond white capped Himalayan jewels.   I thought about the hundreds of hours and thousands of steps I put into each tiny increment I could muster at this altitude and when I reached 7500 meters it was one of the most exhilarating accomplishments I have ever felt.  It was vindication for all my work and yet it was an introduction to the Death Zone.  I know now what I am up against, I know now how I am going to deal with it, one step at a time, ten feet at a stretch and humbled by whatever this magnificent force will give me!

Keep Dreaming, Ben Cark

(Pictures and more dispatches coming soon!)

Dispatches