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2008 K2 and Broad Peak Expedition

Dispatch Thirty-nine: July 8th, 2008

Day Thirty-nine: Rest Day in K2 Base Camp; Another Heli Evacuation

Today, after staying up till 1:00am tinkering with my website dispatch home links, I woke up quite exhausted at 8:30am. Hugues was concerned that his family and friends couldn’t copy the photos off his website (by default, the images are write protected so that people can’t use them on their own websites). I explained that we could send the images and text to one of his family or friends (I think Raphael) and that she could then put them on his blog and forward the full sized images to any other family or friends who wanted them. We worked on forming the most cost effective method for sending these items all morning. After this was done, Mark, the Australian on the Norit team came by wanting to know if it was possible to take the songs off his friend’s ipod and put them on his mp3 player. I gave him the installation file for ITunes and wished him luck as I had no idea whether the songs were purchased on iTunes or not (you can export songs that you have purchased on iTunes from an ipod to the computer, but you need third party software to “rip” the other songs off the ipod). I think that I’ve been generally accepted by everyone at base camp as the IT here at K2. The good thing about this is that I am never bored on rest days, as I have been in the past. This morning, we heard (and saw) a helicopter evacuate someone from Broad Peak. We hope it was Antoine, as his condition had worsened and he needed to be evacuated to have his appendix removed in Skardu at the military hospital. After recovering a few days, he hopes to return to attempt Broad Peak, GII and GI. We wish him luck and a speedy recovery.  In the afternoon, I tinkered with my generator some more. It is quite slow to start now (maybe due to the extremely variable temperatures in base camp at the moment) and I am hoping to make it more efficient. Expeditions now a days require us to be jack of all trades. A mechanic to maintain the generator, an electrician to maintain the solar array and battery system, a doctor to treat all the exotic medical problems that other climbers and porters come complaining about, an IT to maintain our websites, a chef in order to be able to cook foods that will be appetizing to your team mates at high altitude where they have no appetite to begin with, etc. Quite a long and varied skill set indeed. After we finished with our computers, we continued with our usual rest day routines. We read in the tent, visited with each other and other expeditions, and contacted our friends and families to catch up on the goings on back at home.

 

Update: Antoine has been evacuated to Islamabad and the diagnosis of Appendicitis is confirmed.

 

In photos: Left: Qudrat climbing above Camp II; Right: Nick Rice climbing close to Camp II.  (Again from our climb to Camp III  a few days ago; I think you all have seen enough of K2 Base camp for the time being. :)