Retour
6 July 2004
The weather is forecast to be snowy for 3 days, today we had a day off, and
sufficiently bored that we took to Gordon Fergusons hair in order to make
him more streamlined and able to keep up with our speedy French
counterparts.(see attached photos). Gordon feels much better and more
aerodynamic to keep up with our French speed demons. One could also say that
the pictures were taken of Gordy before he saw Broad Peak (the calm at peace
repose) and another after he saw Broad Peak (the terrified madman repose)
Today finally more kerosene and flour arrived, and even a scrawny yak who
has walked itself up here to what will be an unfortunate end in the next few
hours. There had been resupply problems for many of the teams up here - a
huge amount of food had been dropped on the far side of the gondogoro pass
because the porters refused to go over in the heavy snow conditions. After
our ground guys submitted to something that can only be called extortion,
the cache was brought over to Concordia.
If the weather looks OK tomorrow we will head up to take advantage of the
coming fine spell and establish at least Camp 3, and perhaps Camp 4?
As a team everyone is in good spirits and feeling fit too. We fixed 600m of
rope on the alternative route up to Camp Half, a safer route except in deep
snow, so we are pulling our weight with the other teams on the mountain.
So far most teams have established either Camp 2 (us) or a low Camp 3 at
around 6500m? rather than closer to 7000m. The snow was deep up there,
hopefully the light to medium winds up there have firmed it up.
We will be on the mountain next for approx 4 days, so more news only after
we return to BC.
Everybody is going good, and we are looking forward to the days and work
ahead on the higher slopes.
Jamie McGuiness
Base Camp, Broad Peak