Everest 2003 North Side Expedition
Russian Adventure Team Dispatch 14

4/22/2003: News from Russian Adventure Team  Everest expedition from Moscow under the leadership of Alexander Abramov. Alexander Abramov reports from ABC, Everest North Side: “April, 21. Looks like it’s better to climb high in the mountains then to sit in BC – there are more problems in BC. As a result of high altitude and pressure, Misha Litinsky has got an eye hemorrhage. He is partially blind now. We decided to send him to Moscow. But there is another problem: Misha lost his passport. Now he is sitting in BC, seeing next to nothing and can’t leave.

The whole day we’ve been making calls to Russian Embassy in Nepal, to insurance company, to Asian Trekking, having negotiations with liaison officer (he hasn’t reduced the price for the car – not by a cent). The result is: tomorrow Misha goes together with Dima Moskalev to Zhangmu, there the Chinese promise to help Misha sneak to the neutral territory, and our friends from the Russian Embassy will be waiting for him on the Friendship bridge between China and Nepal. They will issue a certificate for Misha, and with that document he will get to Delhi and then to Moscow.

But this will be tomorrow, and today we had a meeting with Estonians, drank Chinese beer with Estonian dry fish.

In the morning the weather was raging: terrible storm in BC, it almost blew the tents away. But it calmed down in the evening. Everest became visible, all covered with snow. Asian Trekking promised to fetch oxygen only by April, 23. So will have to rest till then. Good-bye.”

4/23/2003: News from Russian Adventure Team Everest expedition from Moscow under the leadership of Alexander Abramov. Alexander Abramov reports : "April, 22. Early in the morning Chinese 4-wheeled car came and took Misha Litinskiy to Nepal. But this night Mikhail will spend near Chinese-Nepal border in Zhangmu. The rest of the members of our expedition decided to arrange sauna. Under the leadership of our doctor Sergei Larin we built a sauna-tent. But all of a sudden it started snowing, then the sun came out, then snowing again - and it repeated about 40 times. So only three of us -Larin, Kaimachnikov and Gudzhabidze - managed to wash themselves. The rest of us preferred to wait till it gets warmer and stay dirty. You know, up to 2 cm - is not yet dirt, and more than 2cm will peel off. Tibetan people don't wash and comb themselves at all. To crown it all, because of temperature drops the moraine where our tents are is collapsing, the stones fall each time closer to BC. And eagles drop stones time from time. So we'll have to move our sauna tent. This washing at 5100m is one big problem. Our rest time is coming to an end. On April 24 we are planning to head to ABC, then Camp I (7000m), Camp II (7500m), and may be Camp III (7900m), and after that get down. We hope to be through with all this by May 1. This done, the success of our expedition will be almost ensured.

The only problem is that our oxygen bottles haven't arrived yet, they promise to bring them tomorrow - April 23. We'll see. We were informed that Viktor Kozlov had arrived in Katmandu and gradually moving in our direction. His expedition is a reconnaissance to the Everest North Face. That's all for now. Good-bye."

Dispatches