Nicholas Rice: Broad Peak Dispatch

2007 Broad Peak Expedition

Dispatch Forty-Three: July 22nd, 2007

Day Forty-Three: Recovery at Base Camp; Facial Edema; Burns

Today we woke up at 8:00 and had a long breakfast. I woke up with a very swollen face and took some Diamox, a medication I generally avoid as I despise the side effects. I had promised the cook, Ali Hassan that we would know how many porter loads we each had by lunch so we promptly got to packing our things into 25kg loads. This task was made more difficult by the inclement weather, which was dumping rain on us and weighing our loads down with wet clothing and gear. I did laundry so I would have clean clothes for the four day trek and the cooks burned trash. As there was no trash bin in the mess tent, I took a small bag of trash outside where I was instructed to place it in the fire pit. As I walked away, a fuel canister (something that shouldn´t have been in the fire) exploded and molten plastic spattered on my hands and my right ear. I ran into the mess tent where Jorge proceeded to peel off the plastic, which was burning me all the while. My luck really had abandoned me on this expedition leaving me quite accident prone. After treating my burns which had blistered leaving exposed flesh, I continued packing. After this was done, we had a long dinner, and went to bed.