Everest 2003 North Side Expedition
Russian Adventure Team Dispatch Eight

“April,11. This night was much warmer than the previous one. The morning started with the knocking on the tent: “ Tea or coffee?”. As soon as we finished breakfast, lama came. Our Sherpas built a pile of stones and decorated it with flags. Lama started the ceremony of sanctifying our camp. The members of our expedition were taking pictures. Then the wind rose and we had to run after our altitude tents – we put them up to test them. We have 7 altitude tents.

Then all of us said a little prayer to the success of our expedition.

We are constantly having guests: a Chinese came this morning – but he spoke neither English nor Russian. Then an Australian came.

Our yaks are supposed to arrive tomorrow evening – so we’ll start carrying loads to ABC. Good-bye.”

4/12/2003: News from  Russian Adventure Team  Everest expedition from Moscow under the leadership of Alexander Abramov.
Alexander Abramov reports:

“April,12. The Day of Astronautics. This day began with arguing: what is more important for the society – space flights or Himalayan expeditions? The next topic was how many people die at altitude and why. This arguing resulted in our going to visit climbers’ cemetery. There are 6 Russians there already, all their plaques are on one and the same stone. Igor Tsarev reassured everyone saying that now at least it is clear where the plaque would be.

We had an International meeting of doctors at BC today. The doctors of all teams gathered. There was a request when encountering a dead body on the mountain to make a picture of it so that later it would be possible to identify it. The thing is that the families are having lots of problems with insurance.

We are all in good health. Today is our last quiet day. This evening our yaks arrived, and tomorrow we are moving towards ABC. We are supposed to arrive at ABC on April, 14. After that we’ll try to set up Camp1 on the North Col (7000m).

4/13/2003: News from  Russian Adventure Team  Everest expedition from Moscow under the leadership of Alexander Abramov.
Alexander Abramov reports:

Alexander Abramov. April, 13. Yakmen arranged everything smoothly and at 11.00 a.m. the team of yakmen with yaks came like a hurricane into our camp. Our expedition members were not ready for that and rushed to pack their things. At 1 p.m. we left BC. There were 11 of us – Vasya Elagin got ill and stayed in BC. One more member with a cough – Igor Tsarev – decided to go with the rest. Six of our team – Sergeev, Kaimachnikov, Gudzhabidze, Pushkarev, Pashkov and Larin – sped up and reached Middle Camp in 4 hours 15 minutes. The rest covered the same distance in 6 hours without any hurrying.

It grew colder in the evening. It’s snowing right now in the Middle Camp. The black yaks resting on the ground became almost invisible. We hope tomorrow the weather will improve. Goodbye.

Dispatches