Episode 3, part 3: EBC
By: Dr Deonarain
The trek took a lifetime.
The weather was overcast, cold.
The path underfoot was loose shale and slipped with each footfall.
Breathing was like slipping air through a straw.
I was exhausted. I wanted to sit down, to sleep…
…and then we were there. Everest Base Camp. Elevation 5364m. A great etching on a stone confirmed it. I gazed out upon it. On three square kilometres of rocky debris a settlement of a hundred tents was scattered. On all sides great peaks corralled the tent camp. In the distance, the feared Khumbu ice fall—a shark-toothed collection of blue-ice glacier fragments tumbled down between two great Himalayan giants… but where was she? Where was the mother of all mountains. Where was Everest?
Everest Base Camp
Alpine birds visiting the ‘facilities’ at Everest Base Camp
“Can you see Everest from here?” I turned to Ang Dawa and enquired.
“Yes.”
Ang Dawa pointed his mittened hand out over the icefield. Behind a mighty peak was a shoulder of a mountain, distant but imposing. Turned slightly away as if staring in another direction.
“There?” I pointed as best I could to what I was looking at.
“Yes. There.”
The fact that she remained mostly hidden intrigued me. After all, here we were at the base of the infamous Khumbu icefall, the doorway to the world’s highest mountain and all we could see was a facet, a fragment. The incongruity of it was compelling. It addled the thoughts of my already hypoxic mind and filled me with a mix of emotions—annoyance, frustration, intrigue, elation. Strangely, a line from ‘Macbeth’ cut through my thoughts. “Nothing is, but what is not.”
We walked on, like soldiers returning from foreign campaigns, like lost souls, like zombies.
It took our group another hour to navigate the loose shale into camp. Now well above 5000m our pace was painfully slow. Every footfall was made with supreme effort. By the time we reached camp it was late afternoon. I was wrecked. Battery acid pump in my thighs. My throat was the Kalahari and my toes and fingers, Antarctica. I collapsed onto a camp chair in the mess tent and breathed heavily through my Buff. I avoided eye contact with the others of the group. Direct eye contact could be mistaken for the desire to conversation, and I was in no shape for that.
Without delay, our hosts, Happy Feet Mountaineering brought us warm mango tea and biscuits. We ate and drank and tried to catch our breath. Outside, a fine grapple fell to ground and beat a quiet rhythm on the roof of the mess tent. The thought dawned on me. I was home. For the next two months this patch of stone and ice and dirt with its collection of tents would be my world, domestically speaking. I couldn’t place exactly how I was feeling. After a long sip of mango tea I concluded that it was somewhere between trepidation and excitement.
Dr Dinesh Deonarain is a Fellow of the Royal New Zealand College of Urgent Care who is in Nepal on assignment. He is volunteering for the Himalayan Rescue Association as one of the Everest ER base camp doctors for the 2019 climbing season. This blog follows his experiences in the high alpine of the Everest region.
Listen to the Profile in Urgent Care podcast with Dr Dinesh Deonarain.
If you would like to support Everest ER and the Himalayan Rescue Association, you can donate by bank transfer to: BNZ 02-0800-0196128-000. Also, you can follow Everest ER this season at www.EverestER.org
Boots on Everest – Episode 1
Boots on Everest – Episode 2
Boots on Everest – Episode 3 – Part 1
Boots on Everest – Episode 3 – Part 2