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I'm looking out my tent at this Khumbu Icefall and it is the most amazing piece of ice and crevasse mess that you've ever seen.

It's really cold, today it's probably 40 to 45 degrees out. Little bit of a wind, bright sunshine.

The way that this area looks up here is like a mass of rock and ice and snow. I've never seen anything like it. It's like being at the base of the biggest mountain in the world.

As I look out my tent window, or out my little door here on my tent, the icefall is massive. It looks absolutely terrifying. I mean, I can't imagine. I guess I could imagine going through it, but I can't imagine actually living through it because when you look at it, it's just a huge mass of crevasse. It looks like some kind of a river stuck in midstream. I know that it moves a lot, but it's really wild looking.

Ed Viesturs and David Breashears, whom I've talked to already, are doing an IMAX film up here and they have also been trying to e-mail without success. And apparently the land-to-earth satellite over Australia is not up to snuff. There have been people up here from COMSAT and MIT, all these total brains for IMAX, trying to figure out how they can e-mail and it just ain't happening. Nobody is able to do it right now. So that's that on that. There are many, many, many variables--as far as how this stuff can happen--and maybe in five years or less it might be a little easier. But at this point in time there are so many glitches in the system, it's tough.

Apparently this is a new phenomenon, but David Breashears and Ed Viesturs' team had set a bunch of their equipment at the base of the icefall, which is pretty standard. Most people do that. And apparently last night a bunch of their equipment was ripped off. A bunch of Sherpas ripped it off. Which is really, really bad news.

That happens in Tibet on a regular basis where you can't turn your back without your pocketknife or your pen or your Snickers bar getting picked up. It's really unusual apparently in Nepal, particularly in base camp here, so that's kind of a bummer.

As I mentioned before, one of Rob Hall's Sherpas was up there trying to get his piece of real estate with a couple of other Sherpas and the guy between Camp I and II fell in. He was the second person going up and fell and he broke his femur. Was up there two days in a tent without any medication. And getting a little dicey. Somehow 30 Sherpas went up and wrapped him around on a ladder and somehow were able to get him through the Khumbu Icefall. I can't even imagine it. I saw all these people up there yesterday--now I know they were Sherpas--going through the icefall. What an ordeal to get somebody on a ladder through the icefall.

Anyway, Rob's got to come up with another Sherpa. Ed's got to get a bunch of new equipment, but we're looking pretty good.

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We've been really lucky with the weather the whole time, really haven't been rained on. Really haven't been snowed on. It's just been cold as hell at night. I think the altitude is the hardest thing to deal with. Certainly it's kicked my butt. I really underestimated the whole process of acclimatization, and the importance of acclimatization.

And no matter how strong you are as a person, as a climber, man, if you can't deal with the altitude, the acclimatization, you're going to be in deep trouble because it's harsh. It's very harsh. It's very dry. One of the guys on the trip here hasn't been up this high ever before has raging, raging headaches right now, can barely sit up.

I've been taking Diamox as with most people. I've had some problems, definitely sleeping problems, not sleeping through the night. Diamox makes you want to pee every minute, so that's another thing in the middle of the night that ends up happening. You have to drink at least four liters of water if you want to keep yourself healthy by any stretch of the imagination.

Personally I feel fine now, but last night I felt extreme nausea, got up in the middle of the night and felt like I had to throw up but didn't. Kind of felt like I was pregnant, very similar feeling to being pregnant.

It's really obvious that Scott and Anatoli, and of course the Sherpas, are very well-acclimatized. Scott's extraordinarily strong and doesn't really have a problem, takes a half a Diamox every other day and has great energy and no headaches. And his constitution is really strong for this climbing stuff.

Charlotte Fox is doing really well. Most people say that they're doing really well. I'm the only one who admits that now and then I feel like crap. Or feel kind of fruity, kind of light-headed, just not all together. I think most people want to have the best attitude that they can, and put the best foot forward, and they try and not talk about the fact that they feel like shit.

The bottom line is that if that's what gets them through, then that's what gets them through. Certainly as far as Scott's attitude, he just doesn't complain, doesn't talk about pain, just powers through what is going on. It's a style, an attitude, and as Scott says in the video, it's attitude not altitude.

But also, in my opinion, Scott's been doing this a really long time and so it's easier to have very high expectations when it seems pretty easy for him to acclimatize and not so easy for other people. But certainly acclimatization is one of the key issues. Like I said, no matter how strong you are, no matter what you can do, this altitude, this whole acclimatization process, is really the crux of it all because no matter how good of an ice climber you are, no matter how technically proficient you are, if you don't know how to handle yourself up at 26,000 feet, or 21,000 feet, or 18,000 feet, or 28,000 feet, you're just not going to make it to the summit.

Well, the other thing is the trekking up to base camp. The only thing I can say for sure is to avoid this place called Lobuche. What a stinking pit. It's quite disgusting. I mean there's human feces and yak feces and garbage everywhere and people spitting. I was so surprised to come out of that place without being incredibly sick. Lobuche is between Dingboche and Gorak Shep and it's basically this little stop-off place created for climbers or trekkers but has absolutely no sort of maintenance. Certainly it would be worthy of Brent Bishop or anybody--or Scott, which he's already tried--someone that's on the ecological side of things to look into cleaning up these places because they are cesspools.

The cesspools have been created by the climbers and the Sherpas alike because this little place has been created for the climbers and nobody cleans it up. Nobody maintains it and it's just awful. Some of the other places have tea houses, like Dingboche. Not the cleanest place in the world, but certainly nice, certainly friendly. And Dingboche is at 14,400 feet, I believe, close to that. And Lobuche is around 15,000 or 16,000 feet, something around there.

Basically, Dingboche is the last stop, the last real village where people live. You don't find families or farmers and normal lifestyle, Sherpa lifestyle, higher than that 14,000-foot point at Dingboche and so everything thereafter is really a false, not false, but an environment created by Sherpas for climbers and most of them are pretty filthy places. I feel pretty sad about it.

I know that Scott has gone to the Ministry of Tourism and has had some great ideas as far as how to clean these places up. But dealing with Third World governments is really hard. I went with Scott to the Ministry of Tourism and they change hands like you change your underwear. I mean, they're just in and out and in and out. The bottom line is a lot of them don't care very much, and those that care just don't stick around that long. They're in some other position and have been pushed out or bought out or whatever.

When I went in with Scott and talked with the Minister of Tourism, ecology and keeping base camp clean was really a big issue. Each climbing team, is required to have their own liaison for a number of reasons, a guy that just hangs around your base camp and checks you out. Each team has to pay $1,500 for that person. Part of the complaint has been that these people are paid $1,500 and really don't have anything to do, just go down and smoke and drink at Namche Bazaar and really don't come up here and spend any time whatsoever. It's just sort of a gag. It really doesn't happen as it's supposed to.

One of the things is there are rock falls all the time. God, I feel like I'm going to get buried. I know I'm not, but last night there was a big one behind my tent and I thought, "Oh, I didn't want to be hit by that thing."

Trekking, for the most part, the trails are clean, it's really beautiful, it's wide open, this is basically prime-time trekking season and we saw very, very few people up here trekking around. I think it might be kind of dry for them at this point, but it's a trekker's paradise for the people who want to come over and do it. I think if you like hiking and looking at big mountains this is the place to do it. It's just absolutely beautiful.

The people are incredibly friendly. Even the Sherpas--even if they are carrying these huge, huge 150-pound loads kind of across their heads and onto their backs--they always smile. The women are very shy; they don't want their pictures taken.

So the trekking itself is really quite spectacular. This time of year, because it's really just beginning to be spring, it's pretty barren. You don't see a lot of grass. It's pretty darn brown, brown and rocky and hilly. Now where we are at base camp, it's just solid rock and ice. You don't see anything besides rock and ice and snow and glaciers and peaks. Just a totally rugged area.

But again one of the most impressive things about Nepal has been the kindness of the Sherpas and their smiling faces and attitudes. I'm sure it must in a very big way make it possible [to carry on these expeditions]. I know for a fact that without these Sherpas, these expeditions here that take all the credit for it, could not happen without the Sherpas.

There was a woman--I don't know when it was--she tried to solo and it was her thing. This woman from Japan or Germany or wherever it was, she was going to solo Mount Everest. And she had something like eight top-notch climbing Sherpas with her and 19 porters. I mean, give me a break. And a lot of these Sherpas get absolutely no recognition whatsoever.

Most climbing expedition leaders don't treat their Sherpas like gold and that is the difference, I think. Scott treats them so well, and has insisted upon all the team members getting to know these guys by first-name basis and treating them as friends and getting to know them, not as "the white man comes to climb and these Sherpas schlep." They are treated with a tremendous amount of respect by Scott and boy, does he get it back in spades. There's just no doubt about it, they just love him.

He gives them a lot of extra money and a lot of extra kudos. And I think that's really cool.

I mean, it's just like another political arena up here and some of the egos are pretty massive and some of the people here will go to great lengths to make sure their egos remain secure. But I mean, that's life. What would life be if there were no Caesars? Or little Caesars, I should say.

Bottom line is the climbing community is so relatively small that if you start screwing around with other people's stuff or if you start bad-mouthing another expedition leader or something like that to the Ministry of Tourism, that person who does that bad-mouthing is immediately known within the climbing community. And there are a couple of people here who are almost hated and completely disrespected and some climbing leaders will have absolutely nothing to do with these people. I mean there's some blood that's so bad that it's too bad, but what can you say.

It's now April 10, and I'm talking with Mal Duff, leader of the international Everest expedition, about his team. Who do you have with you and why do you call it an international expedition?

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"Because we've got two guys from Finland, four from Denmark, an American, three Scots, and an Englishman, and a guy from Hong Kong. Well, he's a Scotsman from Hong Kong. I couldn't really think of a more imaginative title, really.

"I've been on Everest twice. Once in winter, which is a bad idea, and once by the unclimbed ridge on the Tibet side, which is a much better idea but equally hard. So this is nice sunny weather, it's a decent route, so I've got a good chance, I think.

"In the Himalayas I've climbed on Lhotse, Nuptse, Cho Oyu, Xixibangma, Annapurna, etc. Quite a long list, and I've climbed in various parts of the world as well--Tibet, Pakistan, and South America--because it's what I do.

"In Pakistan, I climbed a mountain called the Mustagh Tower. It's a 7,000-meter peak, and it's got a very good mix [of rock climbing and mountaineering]. The west side of it is very good mixed climbing. It's much more of a mixed mountaineering route on the west side. On the east side of the mountain it looks very much like the Nameless Tower. Fact, it looks worse. Nobody's even tried the steep part of the Mustagh.

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"I used to rock climb a lot. When you're spending a lot of time in the Himalayas on two or three expeditions a year you definitely don't have the muscles that you used to have for the rock climbing. So I've gone from like 5.12 to 5.9 or something like that."

-- Jane Bromet