Scott Hamilton Tuesday, May 11 Everest Base Camp, Nepal

The E-3 team spent the full day conducting medical research at our Mt. Everest Base Camp facility. The DRASH shelter (www.drash.com) has proven to be an ideal facility for housing the medical treatment and research clinic. Work progressed late into the previous evening as extensive wiring was completed in the medical, communications and dining areas in order to have working electrical lights. Prior to the completion of this project, the team was working by pressurized kerosene lamps, and battery powered headlamps. Several Base Camp medical situations were handled by Dr. Nick Craig and Dr. Ken Kamler at the E-3 Medical Clinic. Cases included acute gastritis, an eye injury, a climber with ribs injured in a fall, and a sherpa with a leg abscess. The leg abscess was drained and a sample of fluid was taken for further diagnosis, utilizing a gram stain technique and the E-3 Olympus microscope which has performed flawlessly it the extreme Everest environment. Nathaniel Meriam and Rick Satava have been hard at work with the wearable biomonitoring devices, known as PSM’s (personal status monitors). Tomorrow the real-time data capture capability will be tested as the climbing team members, led by Jim Williams, ascend through the Khumbu Icefall to Camp 1. Robert Hyman, expedition photographer and mountaineer will trek to the base camp of Pumori to place a repeater device to relay signals from the climbers in the Icefall to the E-3 telecommunications center at Everest Base Camp. A particularly unusual event occurred at our Camp today when two young men from Holland arrived at Everest Base Camp with bicycles, no kidding! They had flown from Kathmandu to Lukla with their bicycles, then followed the same route as the E-3 team to Base Camp. Clearly tired and hungry we invited them to join the E-3 team for lunch. Upon further inquiry it turned out that they had been able to ride their bikes about 1/3rd of the way, and had carried them on their shoulders the remaining 2/3rds of the total distance. We were impressed They are now on their way back to Lukla and Kathmandu. Their next destination is Lhasa in Tibet. . Everest seems to attract an interesting and eccentric group of people. Tomorrow the climbing team will be up at 4am to enter the Khumbu Icefall, expecting to reach Camp 1 by noon. We’ll be back at Base Camp by noon the following day. Scott Hamilton