2002 PEACE CLIMB TO PAKISTAN'S KARAKORUM RANGE

Dispatch Five: July 1, 2002: Tunc and Fernando arrived back at base camp two days ago having established camp1 at 6.100 meters. They left at 6am on the 27th and arrived at the ABC at 5600 at around 11am with very heavy packs. They were carrying their own equipment, tents, fuel and food, each pack was around 20kg. They spend the night there, but they needed to establish their own tent platform. In doing so, Fernando passed a rock to Tunc too quickly and it fell on top of Tunc's hand lacerating two of his fingers. A little bit later when they had built the tent, Tunc's ice axe had accidentally tore Fernando's down sleeping bag. Nevertheless the couple spend the night eating meat and sleeping well and with no signs of anger! I don't know maybe they wanted to keep on playing the snowball fight, who knows. But both are great friends, fortunately.

The next morning they hauled their heavy packs again and headed to the camp1 reaching the destination in 4 hours. Again they carved out a platform on snow and ice for their tent and left their supplies there. After spending one hour there they headed back to base camp in which they arrived at noon just in time for tea.

On their return, Fernando and Tunc had to say "The route is always steep around 50 degrees on snow and ice, sometime involving waterfall sections and especially dangerous at the entry passages because of avalanche danger after a snowfall. The ABC camp is really not an ABC camp but and intermediate camp established to help acclimatize and tent placements are scarce and exposed, especially for more than 8 tents that are there. Nevertheless, it is a great joy to climb such a steep face which compared to the other 8000'ers that we have been to."

In the meantime, I and Asad with our liaison officer went to K2 base camp, we left kind of late so we couldn't stay to long and the weather was getting worse. We arrived at the Romanian base camp, there are only two members Bourdan (sp?) and Kati they are also part of a Peace Climb, they have been at K2 for almost 2 months and are going to be returning in about 5 days. They say the mountain has been very difficult and have not been able to make it past camp2. They feel that no one will be able to summit this year. Although there is a combined Pakistan and Tibetan-Chinese military expedition that has permit until September, maybe no one knows. I will probably return in a few days to visit the other 6 expeditions there.

Tunc and Fernando will be leaving for Camp1 tomorrow morning at 3:00am. They will spend the night there and then they will go and open camp 2. They are taking with them food and a tent so they can equip camp2 between 6,700 or 6,800 mts depending on the conditions there. And they will probably spend the night at camp2. the following day they will either return or try to open camp 3 if everything is going ok. Alberto