Everest 2002 Expedition Report April 23rd, 2002

Spent our 2nd night at Camp 2 at 21,400 ft. The weather has been fairly stormy with over 1 ft of new snowfall overnight. Lines have been fixed to Camp 3. Although there was too much new snow on the Lhotse face to go up today, we took a short walk near the base. The whole team is doing well; working hard to acclimatize and feel strong at 21,400 ft. The past few days have been tough; no problems, just a long time spent hanging out, reading, drinking copious amounts of tea to hydrate…The nights are long too, with temps dropping to -10.

We usually finish dinner by 7:30 pm, and sunrise comes at 8:20 am; so we are burrowed in our sleeping bags inside frosty tents for almost 13 hours at a stretch. Still we’re quite comfortable in our large dome “home-away-from-home” tent.

Camp 2 is situated in the middle of the Western Cwm. The huge SW face of Everest looms directly behind us, rising 7600 ft straight up to the summit. Nuptse is across from camp, and a narrow notch below camp drops down to the icefall and Base. It’s an incredible place to spend a few days.

Tomorrow we plan to make the trip to Camp 3 for the day. The snow has been stabilizing the last 24 hours, so hopefully there won’t be any additional snowfall tonight as the Lhotse Face is a dangerous place when it loads up with snow. We’ll descend to Basecamp on the 25th. The forecast is for stormy weather moving in, so we hope to be back in Basecamp to wait it out. Everyone is looking forward to the luxuries of Basecamp and the lower altitude.

Scott Woolums
Adventures International Inc.

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