IMG Mount Everest Expedition 2003
North Side (Tibet) Dispatch Seven

Dispatch Seven: Friday, April 18, 2003: Eric Simonson reported in from Rongbuk Base Camp this morning with news of the IMG Everest - Tibet team progress. High-altitude team leader Craig John, along with climbers Jay White, Ted Wheeler, Pete Certain, and Nacho Piedra have spent several days at ABC. They made a foray up to the North Col, with Ted reaching the top and the others getting almost there before turning and descending. Jay, Ted and Pete will remain at ABC for another day or two to advance their acclimatization schedule, while Craig descends to IC today with Nacho, then to BC tomorrow. Chris Booher and Bruce Bramhill decided to skip the foray to the North Col and opted instead to descend to interim camp yesterday, with plans to arrive back down in BC today. From here on out, the 3 summit climbers (Ted, Pete and Jay) will probably be on a different rotation cycle than the 8000m climbers (Craig, Nacho, Chris and Bruce.)

Meanwhile, Eric and the trekkers and North Col climbers will embark on the journey uphill to Interim Camp tomorrow. A few complications have arisen. After facing some problems with the altitude, Nancy Steffa, accompanied by husband John Steffa, took a jeep out of Base Camp and headed back to Zhangmu, with a scheduled arrival in Kathmandu either Friday or Saturday. The whole team enjoyed their company and was sorry to see them leave early. Unfortunately, the best medicine for altitude problems is immediate descent, and from Base Camp, there's really only one place to go to achieve meaningful descent, and that is all the way back to Kathmandu.

Logistics problems are also underway. First, a union in Nepal has called an "all country" strike for the 28th and 29th of April. These strikes are not entirely uncommon, but all truck, bus and ground transport grinds to a complete halt (other than the ever diligent bicycle-taxi drivers, who pedal on regardless) and it becomes quite disruptive to travelers. Since our North Col team was scheduled to return to Kathmandu via truck on the 28th, Eric has decided to try to eliminate an "extra day" in the climbing itinerary and get the team back to Kathmandu on the 27th instead, one day ahead of the trucking shutdown. The team agreed it was better to get back one day early than 2 days late and miss existing airline plans. But meanwhile, Thai Airlines has cancelled many of their flights from Bangkok to LAX (with Asian travel way off due to the SARS situation) and so now, several of our team members may face unexpected layovers in Bangkok while waiting for an available flight. It sounds like even though flights have been reduced from daily to only 3 days per week, there is still plenty of room on the flights that are still going. We've tried to give the travel agents involved a "heads up" on this, but it only goes to demonstrate the need for flexibility on these kinds of trips. No matter how much good planning you do, things around you can change quickly, and you just can't control everything. Other than some possible travel delays, we're confident things will work out for everyone.

The expedition is organized by Eric Simonson IMG Expeditions Dispatches

Eric Simonson, veteran expedition leader, Everest Summiter, author and motivational speaker. To book Eric