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2008 K2 and Broad Peak Expedition

Dispatch Seventy: August 8th, 2008

Day Seventy: K2 Base Camp; Final Preparations for Trek Down

Today, after making Fazal expend considerable effort in waking me, I finally headed down to the empty mess tent. This morning, I decided to wait until after breakfast to check the email, allowing me to relax during breakfast. Chuck stopped by shortly after I sat down, and we visited over some Pakistani tea. We continued chatting for a couple hours, and afterward, I finally decided to get going on the email. I had, as I had feared, 37 new emails to go through. I did this and then got to packing. Abbas said that if the porters arrived before 1:00pm, we would head down to Concordia, three hours down, to camp. If they arrived afterwards, we would leave K2 base camp at 4:00am and head all the way down to Goro I. I preferred the later of the two options, as I hadn’t finished packing yet, and I still had things to wrap up here at base camp. Lucky for me, the porters were late, and I had all afternoon to pack and weigh my bags and those of Hugues as well. After this was done, I got to troubleshooting the internet connection, which of course spontaneously corrected itself. That was pretty much the extent of my day at K2 Base Camp; hopefully, my last. There may or may not be dispatches on the way down, as I am not sure how feasible it will be to connect and send them daily in each of the camps. If I don’t send them daily, they will be sent once I arrive in Skardu.

 

In Photos:

Left: Nick Rice in front of K2 in Base Camp

Right: Marble Peak and the glacial moraine, the first view on the trek down