Base Camp CONFIDENTIAL (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine April 2001

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True EVEREST
Base Camp CONFIDENTIAL (Cont.)

By the 1990s, Base Camp social life no longer consisted of playing cards and having a nip of scotch. With tents full of adrenaline-soaked residents waiting for the weather to clear, the boredom often got too strong to bear sober. Or alone.

BRENT BISHOP, son of 1963 American team member Barry Bishop and leader of several environmental cleanup expeditions to Everest in the nineties: There's a lot of debauchery in Base Camp. You've got the yak train coming up, so there's always beer or chang to be consumed. You have good food. You have sat phones. You have computers. There's rock-n-roll music. There's hash to be smoked, if your lungs can take it. Hey, it's a big party. Anybody in the outside world who thinks you're suffering is delusional. Don't you realize what's going on here? It's very colonial. You've got a staff, for God's sake. Even if you want to work, the Sherpa staff won't let you. You might be a low-life climber back home in the U.S., but once you get to Base Camp you're catered to. You get there and take a look around and it's like, "We're kings at Base Camp!"

ADRIAN BURGESS, the other half of the notorious Burgess twins: There's enough hardship on an expedition. You don't want people dreaming of steak and salads and stuff. And beer. I've always believed that if you can quench some of these dreams, you can keep your teammates focused on the mountain.

AL BURGESS: So me twin brother and I always brewed a good English ale in Base Camp. It was too cold, so we didn't get much fizz, but it wasn't bad.

ADRIAN BURGESS: We had some parties with it, that's for sure. But oh, God—the hangovers! They're quite annihilating. You feel like you've slept at 26,000 feet.

ED VIESTURS, famously strong climber and guide, and an almost constant presence at Everest since 1987: I remember this buddy of mine made it halfway into his tent. He just passed out. He woke up the next day with his legs still laying outside, and he thought his feet were nearly frostbitten.

TODD BURLESON, founder and director of Alpine Ascents International, one of the first guide outfits to offer trips up the mountain: The Sherpas like to have quite a party. When they start drinking... I remember one year we literally had a stretcher to carry Sherpas who had passed out in the snow. And then you'd get these Sherpa fights. Some porter would call one of our Sherpas, you know, a high-altitude dork or something, and this guy would rip his shirt off, and 20 of them would get into it. We had some good times that way.

HENRY TODD, Scottish expedition organizer and perennial figure in Base Camp throughout the 1990s: One of the very best parties was when [expedition leader] Mal Duff died in Base Camp [in 1997]. He was a great raconteur and we were having a very serious wake. Mal was Scottish. After we did our bit of talking, we were singing the Scottish national anthem, and the only two people who knew the words were myself and Pete Athans. But after we repeated it a couple of times, everyone knew it. Just about everyone had brought a bottle of whiskey. And in no time at all it got very, very wild. We went back to Jon Tinker's mess tent and Guy Cotter has this amazing act that he can do; he can swing like a chimpanzee from rafter to rafter. Tinker's tent had these rafters, and so we had Cotter going up and down and up, up above a table absolutely littered with glass. If he had fallen, which looked to be incredibly probable, he would have smashed himself and all that glass.

NEAL BEIDLEMAN, American guide and climber, best known for saving several lives during the deadly 1996 storm on Everest: You know, it used to be information that was the most coveted item from the real world. Now the big thing everybody craves is young female climbers. No price can be put on their worth to the lecherous, tongue-dragging, testosterone-riddled male climbers.

LYDIA BRADEY: We females would take my little stereo and go to the other side of the moraine to where we were really private. And we found this big flat rock and we used to go dancing to the techno-pop of the late eighties. We just loved dancing. That was our retreat, really. We did a lot of dancing or talking, or I guess a little bit of smoking or drinking. It was quite funny. Good way to acclimatize.

AL BURGESS: I really can't tell you some of the stories because, you know, some people are married. Of course, the Sherpas always knew who was sleeping with whom. I'm certainly not putting any names to this story, but I've heard of climbers leaving girls' tents in the middle of the night and walking backwards between tents so the tracks in the snow confuse the nosy people in Base Camp. That's a pretty common trick.

HEIDI HOWKINS, American climber and expedition organizer who attempted the summit in 1999: It's not a difficult thing to pull off, even up higher on the mountain, as long as you have supplementary oxygen. I mean, you've got down sleeping bags and down suits. And the confines of the tent is no big deal. It's more the... uh...can you do it? I'm pretty sure I know who holds the altitude record now. I'm not saying. But let's just say this couple made it happen at the South Col, at 26,200 feet.

ADRIAN BURGESS: You know, whenever you've got a few women in a dangerous situation, you better look out. Death and sex are very closely linked, right? That's what Freud reckoned. So it never surprised me when people started having it off in dangerous situations.

GÖRAN KROPP, unorthodox adventurer who rode his bike from Sweden to Everest in 1996 and summited: I heard a lot of rumors about sex in Base Camp, but I was not invited. Yes, I have felt the glacier moving. [Laughs] That was a bad joke.

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