Bill Allen, Everest Base Camp April 27th

We woke up to another snowy morning here at base camp, but after a few hours the skies cleared and it actually turned into a pretty nice day.

Scott, Ephi, and Chris enjoying a snowy morning at base camp (Khumbu Ice Fall in the back ground)

Yesterday was cloudy and snow most of the day, so we had an afternoon movie. We watched a James Bond movie with the climbers and most of the Sherpa team packed into the big dome. It was pretty entertaining for all of us. After the movie we had some folks from other camps over for a bit of Poker. Low stakes Rupee Poker is quickly becoming our game of choice for cloudy afternoons at BC, and is a good excuse to meet some folks from the other teams. Mark Tucker and Linden Mallory from the RMI team, along with a couple of the doctors from the base camp clinic joined us for yesterdays game. They left with most of their stack of Rupee’s in tact.

Today has been another rest and recovery day, doing laundry, showering, and catching up with some emails. Tomorrow we’ll plan to get out for a bit of a hike, back up to Pumori Camp 1 if the route isn’t too snowy and icy, or maybe just down the trail to Gorak Shep to stretch the legs. All of the snow up high has slowed the progress of the Sherpa team who are fixing the ropes up the Lhotse face right now, so we may wait a few days before we go up for our next round of acclimatization up to Camp 2.

That’s about it for today from BC. We’re all pretty happy to be down here for now, but will be antsy to get back up for round 2 soon.

Bill Allen