May 17, 2000

May 17, 2000 Byron, Tim and the team's Sherpas arrived at Camp II in good weather.

Basecamp to Camp II:

I woke up to my watch alarm at 5 a.m. and began to put on my clothes and get ready for breakfast in the dining tent. It was a nice clear morning with little wind down in Basecamp.

The night before I had finished the hiring of Ang Dorje Sherpa, a good friend of Lhakpa Tshering, my sirdar. Ang Dorje Sherpa became available when the expedition he was on had finished an unsuccessful climb on Everest and they were returning home. I felt that I would need another strong Sherpa to help my other Sherpas carry the communication gear required for the broadcast from the summit. I wanted the Sherpas to carry as light a load as possible, then in case someone fell ill and could not continue on safely, the others could distribute the load amongst them. When I planned the expedition two years ago I wanted to build in as much redundancy as possible, from Sherpa climbers, food, oxygen, tents etc, and of course rope. Only weather or an injury should be an obstacle for us.

I went over to the dining tent and was met by Bhota, who was bringing in hot milk tea, eggs and porridge. I felt great eating a large breakfast. Tim came in and ate and soon Michael Down arrived.

Michael, another Canadian from the Henry Todd Expedition team, wanted to climb up with us as his expedition was running into some logistical problems. I had met Michael on Everest back in 1998 and was pleased when I ran into him. While I was down in Dingboche I bumped into Michael again and told him that if he wanted to draft in behind us, he was more than welcome.

I told Michael I would love to help out another Canadian. I told Michael that I would also help him by having one of my Sherpas carry up his gear to Camp IV and then carry a spare oxygen cylinder up to the Balcony. However, he would be on his own, independent and responsible for himself.

After breakfast, I got my harness and other climbing equipment on and was ready to leave. I said bye to everyone and made my way up towards the icefall. Lhakpa and I climbed on quickly through the icefall, across the ladders and over the seracs, while Tim and Michael came up behind. In less than two hours Lhakpa and I climbed up to Camp I, and were soon joined by Tashi Sherpa and Ang Sonam. We sat and ate a banana each and drank some water before climbing on towards Camp II. It was going to be a beautiful day, which meant a lot of sun and heat in the Cwm. I radioed Basecamp to tell them of our progress and that Tim and Michael were behind in the icefall.

The sun was very hot as we made our way up the Western Cwm. I had taken off my outer shell and peeled off most of my other clothes, and put on more sun cream. The temperature soon got to over 40 C in the Cwm as Lhakpa and I made our way up towards the glacial moraine beneath the south west face of Everest, where Camp II is situated. We passed Jeff Rhoads as he was going down from his aborted summit attempt the night before. I had met Jeff in 1998 when he was on Tom Whittaker's expedition as a filming cameraman/climber. He wished me all the best as he passed by and I wished him the same, as he was now off to K2 to climb and film for National Geographic.

Because of Jeff's experience filming at high altitude, I had originally asked him to film for me when I got back from Everest in 1998. But because I wanted an all-Canadian expedition except for Sherpas, I decided against it. I had wanted an experienced climber who had been to altitude before and could also film and photograph. It is hard to find a cameraman who has been to very high altitude; I had spent many months looking for a Canadian climber who had been to very high altitude and could be trained to film. I was told about Tim Rippel who had been on the north side of Everest four times and was a good climber, and who had done some filming as well. So, I hired him.

Lhakpa and I arrived at Camp II four hours after leaving Basecamp. We were met with a nice cold lemon drink and food. I radioed down to Basecamp and let them know Lhakpa and I had arrived and that Tim and Michael were a long way back. The rest of the morning was spent just relaxing in the tent as well as drinking and eating. I tried calling Tim by radio on numerous occasions but he did not have his radio on. I sent down one of the Sherpas to see if he could see in the Western Cwm. I had been trying all afternoon to radio Tim and Michael. Michael had gone over to his team's camp and I think it was around 4 o'clock when Tim finally responded on radio and said they were just below Camp II.

Tim was very tired so he rested while we set up for the radio broadcast to CBC Newsworld, and Newsworld International. I told them that going on to Camp III tomorrow depended on what I heard from the weather report at 6:00 p.m. I wanted to see some consistency in the weather before climbing on any further. All through the expedition it seemed the weather report was hit and miss. The Mount Everest massif (Everest, Lhotse, and Nuptse) creates its own weather system as the peaks thrust up so high into the air and disturb the jet stream. It turned out that the weather forecast was for higher winds on the 20th which would lighten up after that. So I decided to wait it out at Camp II another day before pushing my team on.

When we made our summit push at the beginning of May, the forecast told us of good weather, possibly the best that Everest had seen for many years. That great forecast on summit night had turned into howling winds, which forced us back from our summit attempt the night of May 5th. I wanted to be as careful as I could with my judgement, as I did not want to go back up to Camp IV and be pushed back by the weather again.

We would go to Camp III on the 19th and then Camp IV on the 20th so we could summit on the 21st. I was beginning to get a little concerned with the physical conditioning of Tim, and felt the extra day would do him a lot of good. Throughout the climb I would have Virginia, the team leader at Basecamp, talk to Tim when he reached a camp. This would help her assess his condition. I would talk to Lhakpa about how all the Sherpas were feeling and pass that along to Virginia. It was important to me to make sure that the members were not going to put themselves in a situation where their health and safety would be jeopardized.

As we were outside looking up at the Lhotse Face, I noticed a climber coming towards our camp. It turned out to be Nazir Sabir from Pakistan who was coming down from the summit. I went up and hugged Nazir and brought him into our dining tent for food and drink. Nazir had not had anything to drink for over 19 hours. He told us how he had climbed to the summit and that he had decided to come down to Camp II after resting at Camp IV. He told me his camera did not work and he was ready to throw it off the mountain, but thought better of that. He was able to film some footage from the top, as the weather was calm. He had become the first Pakistani to summit Mount Everest. (Nazir has since e-mailed me from his homeland and told me how he is being treated like royalty and is being toured all over his country for his successful summit.)

See you at the top!

Byron Smith
Expedition Leader