Gaining Altitude

Shegar Town, Tibet

Hi Trisha,
This is an on-the-fly dispatch from the town of Shegar. Sorry, can't send pics today as there's no way to connect to this ancient computer in a dusty, grimy cafe.

The expedition is traveling in two busloads full of climbers, trekkers and film crew, and loaded to the gills with gear and six huge legs of yak (290 pounds worth). That’s just a three-week supply of meat; more will be trucked to base camp later.

Training and acclimatizing began today. Everyone slept pretty well at 16,000 feet (4,850 meters) in a roadside hotel in Shegar, though a few of us, including myself, felt the telltale throbbing in the head from the drive to higher altitude.

Nevertheless, we all hiked up the majestic, ruined hillside fortress of Shegar Dzong, a veritable castle destroyed in bygone wars that is now being restored. The climb up the steep trail was the first bit of testing at altitude for everyone, a 1,000-foot (300-meter) lung workout.

Everyone reached the summit - a prayer flag festooned, square-topped ruin that was once a stronghold for a Tibetan governor. Predictably, the climbers and guides sprinted up pretty fast, but kudos has to go to one of the trekkers (going only as far as base camp), a Texan named Eddie Rogers. There ain't too many tall peaks in the Lone Star State, but he toughed it out, urged on by Tim Medvetz, who coaxed him along to the top.

Below us sprawled the tan Tibetan plains. On a clear day, Everest is visible from here, but a storm brewing in the Himalayan Range denied us the view.

Walking back down a few of us stopped at the monastery, which today houses about 30 practicing Buddhist monks. A young monk welcomed us into a dark inner sanctum, in which yak butter lamps lit up the Buddha statues and paintings with an eerie yellow glow.

A visiting Tibetan who spoke English directed us to one of the strangest things I have seen in this wonderfully strange land: the dried heart and tongue of the former abbot of the monastery, preserved in a glass case. This enlightened being we were told sat in a meditative pose for a week after his death, and his heart and tongue survived his cremation.

I felt as if I had been transported back to ancient Tibet. This was quite a contrast to the modernization we'd been traveling through - of highways paved over ancient yak trade routes and sprawling cities rising up around traditional villages.

The team will arrive at base camp at the end of the day on April 11. Already Russell and his team have set up the camp. When we arrive, the climbers will begin in earnest the long, slow process of adjusting their bodies to high altitude and eventually hike two days further up the East Rongbuk Glacier to occupy Advanced Base Camp. It's a tough place to live, higher than the summit of Alaska's Mount McKinly, the highest point in North America. Painful days await.

Signing off, Greg Child