Nicholas Rice: Broad Peak Dispatch

2007 Broad Peak Expedition

Dispatch Seven: June 16th, 2007

Day Seven: Skardu; Final Preparations for The Expedition

Today, I woke up at 8:00AM and had a long breakfast. Then Jorge and myself went to the Bazaar to buy some small last minute items and then stopped at the ATP office to pick up our fuel and bamboo sticks. Afterwards, I had a meeting with Naiknam to discuss the itinerary for the following day and inquire about my bag. He assured me that even though the flight that day was cancelled, my bag would still arrive in the evening. I then went to my room to sort my food for my trip and enlisted the help of Badia and Mauricio to slim down the nearly 75KG’s of food I had brought. We got my high altitude food down to 25KGs and put some of the group base camp supplementary food in one of Jorge’s barrels. I then got news that my duffel bag with my critical high altitude gear had in fact arrived, so I brought it up and started getting my four other porter loads together. We decided on a 6:00AM departure for Askole. Dirk and I decided to make one final trip to the Baazar to get some Dexamethasone for injection and some accessory chord for our tents. We had our last “civilized” dinner at the hotel, met the additional Spanish members, who arrived 10 minutes prior, and went to bed.