Nicholas Rice: Broad Peak Dispatch

2007 Broad Peak Expedition

Dispatch Twenty-Two: July 1st, 2007

Day Twenty-Two: Rest Day; Problems with ATP

Today, we all woke up at 8:00am and had our usual rest days’ long breakfast. Afterwards, I returned to my tent to read for awhile. About half an hour later, Jorge came to get me and led me to the mess tent where an argument had begun between two ATP trekking guides and Mauricio and Badia. The guides were insisting that they had the right to take enough food for six climbers and eight trekkers from our already meager and dwindling supply for their newly arrived group. Mauricio adamantly defended us against this claim until I arrived. Knowing full well that just three days prior, we had been forced to call Ashraf Amman in Islamabad to order more food, I insisted that our cook had not been given six additional climbers’ worth of food and if this was in fact the opinion of ATP, then it was crystal clear that years of experience had not bestowed upon them any realistic idea as to how much food is necessary for a climber recovering from extreme physical effort at high altitude. Additionally, the fact that their errors in planning and logistics, the precise service we were paying them for, were being tangibly brought before us in the form of very unprofessional bickering seemed outrageous to me. After they realized that I would not change my position on the matter, they childishly brought it to the attention of the Liaison officer. After reiterating almost every aspect of my argument to the Major, he agreed that this incident was extremely unprofessional and resembled a company with employees who had absolutely no concept of discretion when dealing with their own internal misjudgments and errors. They were ringing alarms to their clients of their ineptitude. Adding salt to the fresh wound, we discovered while scrutinizing the list of what we had in our stores that we were completely out of staple foods including milk, eggs, tang, coffee, vegetables, and soup. A professional staff would have anticipated the supply shortage before it reached this critical level and ordered the food enough in advance where it wouldn’t be noticed by the clients. In the end, we surrendered the food as we didn’t want the other members from the other group to starve and wrote a very stern letter to Sultan in Concordia demanding the missing dietary staples in a timely manner. After this, we had lunch and visited our Georgian friend and a Spanish team that had been on Gasherbrum II with us the year before. Upon our arrival back at camp, Badia assisted me in compiling my load for the carry to Camp I-II-III the following morning. Then the Mexican doctor, Fernando, paid us a visit and took a look at my swollen shoulder. He gave me a sling for it, and an electro-stimulation device and advised me to take NSAIDS every morning. After this, we had dinner and then went to bed.