大象传媒

Arrival in Base Camp

• Ben
• 8 Apr 07, 05:41 AM

This is our third day at Base Camp. With setting up tents and camera gear I’ve only just got round to writing a blog entry. It’s also been extremely difficult to muster much energy in the last couple of days. We’re now at 5300m, and just walking from A to B is a bit of an effort.

I’m starting to acclimatise now, and things are becoming easier, but when we arrived it was about all I could do to make it into camp and have a cup of tea. The night before I hadn’t slept particularly well, which is apparently a normal side effect of altitude. We then walked for about three hours to Base Camp.

We’d been filming the team arriving just outside camp, and I ended up carrying two backpacks the remaining 500m or so. It more or less wiped me out. How the Sherpas, who carry most of the expedition equipment, do it, I have no idea.

We’re now settling in to life at Base Camp, and the Xtreme Everest team has got the science under way. It’s a pretty hostile environment here. It got down to -12C last night, and everything freezes. As you breathe out at night, the water vapour freezes on your sleeping bag and inside your tent. In the morning most of my stuff ends up covered in ice. We’ve got a couple of months living here. Should be fun!