EVEREST LIVE
May 19, 2001
From: Didrik Johnck
This morning was spent looking through the stack of photos. My stack of photos is slightly crumpled, stained with various food products, and has pictures of my girlfriend Cynthia, my mom Ellen, my dad John, and brothers Zeb and Charley, and some shots of my neighborhood in San Francisco. My stack of photos is sitting in a pile next to my sleeping bag. Most of us brought photos of home; Sherm for example, has photos of his family in an accordian thing which sits on a table next to his sleeping bag. Charley has a little booklet which keeps all the photos protected. Luis didn't bring any pictures, but received a package the other day delivered to base camp by mail runner that had a bunch of photos of his S.O. and has been sharing chocolate and candy like it is going out of style (thanks Kristen).
I lay on my sleeping bag, and thermarest LE (luxury edition), the sun warming the tent to about 75, sipping a pepsi that Kami had given me, going over my little stack of photos. I thought about home, about my friends and family, about work, and about my life in San Francisco. It was one of those moments where I forgot about everything immediately in my future (like climbing this beast). All sounds around me ceased to penetrate my ears until the zipper of the tent fly flew open and PV came in, followed by three other people, looking for the satellite phone. Apparently a Sherpa from one of the Spanish teams had come down with pulmonary edema and needed a helicopter evacuation. The Spanish team did not have a phone and we would let them use ours. My little world went from reminisceing about home and the people I love to watching futile attempts to contact Kathmandu through the satellite phone. The phone connections to Kathmandu are notoriously bad and it took about 30 minutes to get a line.
This is what life can be like in base camp. There are times of total peace and quite and times of mayhem. Like right now, it's dumping snow outside and we are in the love dome listening to Bob Dylan. I just shut the door in hopes that none of the wandering trekkers will try and come in looking for shelter. They can keep their greasy, disease and germ carrying selves out of this camp. The last thing any of us needs right now is some well meaning trekker to bring their hacking, bronchitis ridden and germ spewing lungs near me. Most of us are damn healthy so let's keep it that way.