Nicholas Rice: Xixabangma Dispatch

2007 Xixabangma Expedition

Dispatch Four: August 31st, 2007

Day Four: Final Preparations for the Drive to Tibet

Today, I woke up at 6:30am, went down the lobby for breakfast and chatted for a few hours with the other Americans on my team. Afterwards, Vishnu met with us and I asked about getting a generator for Base Camp and the EPI fuel cans for higher on the mountain. He explained to me that it was impossible for me to rent a generator from them with this short notice as they had not bothered to get the maintenance done on them since the spring season. Since the generator wasn’t optional for me with my com setup for this year, I asked him to take me to the Honda dealer so I could purchase a new one. That process took nearly four hours for reasons that remain unknown to me. Afterward, I bought the engine oil, spark plugs, sealed lead acid battery, and other electronic accessories that would be necessary to operate and maintain the generator at 5,700 meters. I would later have to purchase 50 liters of petrol in Tibet. After all this was done, I returned to my room to finish packing my bags for the drive to Chinese Base Camp. We brought our bags down to the lobby to be loaded, made our final payment to Monterosa Trekking and went to our welcome dinner at a very traditional Nepali dinner with dances from the different regions of Nepal. After the never-ending alcohol that was served with dinner (some sort of cold sake that tasted like gasoline), we went to bed around 11:00 knowing that waking up at 4:00am the following morning was not going to be easy.