Base Camp CONFIDENTIAL (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine April 2001

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True EVEREST
Base Camp CONFIDENTIAL (Cont.)

Despite the increased climbing traffic, Everest remained a solitary place into the early 1980s, with just one team occupying Base Camp per season. That changed, in sometimes startlingly cushy ways, in 1983, when the Nepalese government opened up the mountain to five teams per season, each on a different route. Base Camp metamorphosed into a bustling international village, with a rudimentary media operation, better heating, and the occasional prize ham.

AL BURGESS, member of the British West Ridge Expedition in 1980 and one-half of the notorious Burgess Twins, whose style pushed the limits both on the mountain and at Base Camp social gatherings: It was winter. There was no fresh snow. It was just a glacial moraine on top of dry ice. We were cooking with kerosene, and I remember the kerosene freezing. It was minus 30 every day. We just hung around in full down suits, and there was no running water anywhere. Nobody really knew what giardia was. Even our doctor didn't know. Our stomachs were just riddled. We didn't have filter pumps or iodizing. We were swallowing antibiotics like candy.

“I always approach Base Camp with the attitude: OK, here’s 300 men who have PMS and really don’t know what’s going on. And then it all makes sense.” —Heidi Howkins

KURT DIEMBERGER, Austrian cinematographer and grandfather of the fast-and-light approach to climbing in the Himalayas: Ah, we had fabulous food. At Base Camp you must always eat to keep your body weight up. I remember the Italians, they had a tent full of hams, hams big like a guitar, hanging there in two rows. The Spanish even beat the Italians. They had the best food I have ever had in my life. They had big hams, lots of hams, and they brought lots of tomato juice and big bags full of garlic, which they bought in the villages, ja? One year we had freeze-dried food, but we all got the shits, ja? People at Base Camp would often get the shits. Every year the expedition leader set a rule. He says, "OK, we agree. We take the water for the kitchen from the left side of the moraine and everybody goes to shit on the right side of the moraine." But nobody ever remembers what the orders were the following year. It could be just the reverse, ja?

RICK RIDGEWAY, American climber and filmmaker who covered Texas oil tycoon Dick Bass's summit attempt in 1983 for Bass didn't make it to the top, but David Breashears, working as a cameraman for ABC, did: That one was a different expedition for everybody. I was a producer for ABC and at the same time I was the correspondent, so I had a microphone that had the ABC logo on it, and I had an ABC patch that I was supposed to pin on my jacket and stand in front of the camera and file reports and do interviews as those guys went up the mountain. We had this young hotshot named David Breashears rope-gun the camera to the summit. He microwaved the signal off the top to a receiver dish on top of the Everest View Hotel [in the Khumbu Valley] and then it was transmitted to Kathmandu and then to New York. It was the first live transmission off the summit. Kind of neat.

PETE ATHANS, consummate American guide known to his peers as "Mr. Everest" for taking part in 13 expeditions up the mountain: Boy, it's ironic, because my first experience at Base Camp was extremely negative. In 1985 there was really no environmental ethic. There were still huge piles of trash that were just smoldering up there. We did have contact via shortwave radio to the [Nepalese] Ministry of Tourism, but it was incredibly unreliable. Occasionally it would work well—when everyone's antennas were lined up and the god Vishnu was smiling on everybody. It was almost a comedy. We'd run wires all over the place and put tinfoil on 'em and do the best we could to try to get the weather forecasts.

ED WEBSTER, American climber, writer, and photographer who lost eight fingertips and three toes to frostbite on Everest: [In 1985] we had a propane space heater for our dining tent. We called it the "wuss machine." Everybody wanted to sit next to the wuss machine in the mess tent to warm up in the evenings. That was basically the only luxury item in the camp. Although Chris Bonington did have an Apple IIc computer, we had one too—probably one of the first years a computer had been to Base Camp, I think. We had solar-powered battery rechargers. Our journalists would type their dispatches on the computer, print 'em out, and then they would be sent by mail runner down the trail.

PETER HACKETT: I had my share of drama, but a lot of what I saw in Base Camp was pretty routine. A lot of headaches, from both the altitude and the occasional hangover. Lots of broken ribs caused by incessant coughing. I'd say that codeine was the wonder drug at Base Camp—and still is. It kills the headache, stops up your bowels—which climbers like when they're on the mountain—and stops your cough. A few times we had climbers whose blood had thickened too much. We'd treat it by bleeding off a bunch of blood. All I needed was a flat place for the climber to lie down, and then I'd stick a big needle in his arm. Basically, I'd run a small tube out of the body and into an empty tin can. We'd bleed off about a pint at a time. The Sherpas thought it was really crazy, because they thought of the blood as a source of strength. They wouldn't allow their own blood to be drawn, and they didn't want to deal with anybody else's blood either. So I'd have to go empty it away from Base Camp, just sort of hide it from the Sherpas, behind a rock. You can imagine, the Sherpas coming over to my place for tea, and there's this climber there with blood pouring out of him.

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