Nicholas Rice: Broad Peak Dispatch

2007 Broad Peak Expedition

Dispatch Eight: June 17th, 2007

Day Eight: Jeep Ride from Skardu to Askole

Today, I woke up at 4:00AM and hurriedly scrambled to get my last bag packed and weighed and put together the luggage that I was leaving in Skardu. After bringing the final five 25KG loads down to be loaded onto the jeeps, I had a brief breakfast, and paid for the teas and additional items I had ordered from the hotel. After this, we were on the road to Askole. We had lucked out and only had three people plus the driver in our jeep until we got to Shigar when one of our three jeeps broke down (part of the transmission was literally on the ground). From this point onto our lunch break, we crammed five people plus the driver into the jeeps and continued on. We stopped for tea so the new jeep could catch up with us from Skardu, and Badia and Mauricio purchased some gems from Haidarabad. At this point, the other jeep showed up and we were once again situated comfortably for the VERY bumpy ride. We arrived at Askole around 2pm and retrieved our bags, rechecked that they were all 25KGs and under and watched in awe while the Spanish duo sorted and loaded 16 porter loads! We had dinner at 6:30pm and went to bed soon afterwards.