International Peace & Friendship expedition to Broad Peak 2003

Dispatch 10: Broad Peak base camp July 9th; The past few days here at base camp have been full of card-playing, book reading, meetings with the Spanish, Greek, Swiss, Korean, Pakistani an and Nepali elements of the growing broad peak community.

we are happy to have Fred, John and Walt back safely after they descended on the 8th in poor conditions of wind and snow. While John and Walter remained for a second night in camp 2, Fred decided to brave deep snow in solitude and moved up to an..... at 6700 meters. A fine dinner and a cd player helped him pass the night. Fred has warned us if similar snow conditions persist we will find a great difficulty in reaching the summit.

We hope today will bring weather that.......weather is a great topic today as........ reports from Austria Germany and Spain who was looking out of their unzipped tent windows for the latest update we have enough evidence suggesting good weather on or about the 12th with this in mind the basks, mike multy and I, the Greeks and the Koreans all hope the head up to camp 2 tomorrow with the idea of jumping on the first good weather window John, Fred, Walt, and Taki, will follow a day later after resting.

On the 8th the teams all based nearby will coordinate efforts on the mountain and the 19 climbers arranging tents, stoves, fuel, food and fixed ropes we are running low on space at camp 1 and camp 2 Fortunately the spirit of cooperation is growing and the idea of saving weights and sharing tents and responsibilities is taking hold. On a personal note all members of our team, the Greek team and the Korean team are in good health at this point. including we have seen a medley of medical maladies which have kept yours truly busy with diagnosis and treatment The most serious for our team was our cooks middle finger which developed a large abcess after he poked a sewing needle under his nail We have cleaned and drained the abcess and learned a lot about how much puss a human finger can hold at one time all redness and swelling now has disappeared and is back to work and smiling.

Speaking of smiling you should have seen the faces of the team when our long awaited beer arrived yesterday from Islamabad the thought of a cool frosty ale and a pizza for lunch had us all Imagine the stunned look on all of our faces when we read the fine print on the 48 cans, quote, "non-alcoholic malt beverage" we were behind this tragedy....ah well. With a little imagination we all had a few rounds and pretended to be passed out in our tents for the afternoon. we made up for the beer tragedy with a fantastic game of cards with Mr Han Mike, John and I learned a Korean game we'll call "thank you" Walter and I were looking on, I lost 50 ruoees and John lost 250 rupees and Mike walked away with an as yet undisclosed sum. We thank Mr Han for his continued hospitality which has included hitting golf balls off the glacier with a 5 iron, a great lunch and a long game of cards. With another round of summit pushes ahead we all are looking forward to coming home and seeing our loved ones.

We can't wait to share more fully our wonderful experience when we return home. With good luck and good weather we will head up tomorrow in search of the the as yet elusive summit. From the card table under a snowy tent. Stu

Dispatches

 

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