Nicholas Rice: Broad Peak Dispatch

2007 Broad Peak Expedition

Dispatch Seventeen: June 26th, 2007

Day Seventeen: Carry to Camp I postponed

Today, I woke up at 3:30am to the alarm on my Thuraya Satellite Phone and immediately realized that I wasn’t going to go up to Camp I. It was raining quite hard and my already heavy backpack was getting soaked sitting outside the vestibule of my tent. I lay awake listening to the other members of the expedition getting their things together and finally fell back to sleep. The day continued to be a wet one. Even the climbers who previously had planned to sleep at Camp I came down the same day and the entire group was at base camp by dinner time. I decided to go up to Camp I to sleep the next day, as Ali, the high altitude porter of the Mexicans was also planning a carry that day and could therefore show me the route to the base of the fixed ropes. I went to bed quite early so I would have plenty of energy the following morning as I knew I would be carrying a 30kg load.