Scott Hamilton Monday, May 3 Namche Bazzar, Nepal

Beginning with the first rays of light the tiny mountain village of Namche Bazaar became a whirlwind of activity. Saturday is "market day" and nomad, locals, and traders from miles away journey to Namche to trade their wares. Fresh vegetables from mountain gardens, whole sides of yak, and all kinds of odds and ends are displayed in a crowded open-air market. Even Tibetan rugs are available from the nomads who cross high passes in the Himalayas to make the multi-day journey to Namche. The E-3 members awoke to the sound of horses, yak bells, barking dog, and crowing roosters as our camp is along one of the main trails above the village.

The E-3 team seemed to be jinxed by electrical problems today. Early in the morning our main (new) generator suddenly ceased producing electricity. A number of vital cords and connectors were "missing in action". Voltage transformers brought from the US produced "breaker popping" short circuits. Jim Bruton, telecommunications expert, and Scott Hamilton put their previous expedition experience to work to jury-rig a viable power system utilizing an array of non-standard parts and the expedition's back-up generator. The bottom line is that the Expedition now has 220-volt power, and has modified all major devices to run on 220 volts. The need for 110-volt power is therefore quite limited, and the situation is under control...for the moment at least. The team is trying to repair the main generator but the prognosis does not look good. This kind of stuff happens all the time on expeditions, and provides great opportunities for innovation and problem solving.

Research commenced mid-morning (after solving the power problems) has been going on all day. The DRASH tent, provided by DHS Systems of Orangeburg NY, has proven to be the epicenter of all E-3 research activities. The double wall exterior has made it a very comfortable place to work, free from the temperature extremes that occur in single wall tents, the vertical walls allow a tremendous amount of work space, and the white interior provides ideal lighting conditions and color balance for the opthomological research being conducted by the team. Dr. Javier Davila is conducting cardiac output, blood oxygen saturation, and stress tests. Dr. Chris Macedonia is conducting 3-D Doppler ultrasound sound exams of the carotid, brachial, and tibial posterior arterial blood flows. Dr. Jennifer Grin is conducting visual acuity examinations, and Jennifer Kreshak is performing blood chemistry analysis utilizing an Istat portable analysis unit. In the meantime Dr. Ken Kamler and Dr. Nick Craig are hard at work processing a long line of villagers seeking medical treatment.

Our plan is to break camp at 6:30am on Sunday morning to begin the trek to Tengboche, which we should reach in the early afternoon. The Buddhist Monastery at Tengboche is considered to be one of the holiest sites in all of Nepal, and every living creature there remains unharmed by humans. The E-3 team has a large number of prayer flags and will seek to have them blessed by a high Lama at Tengboche in order to properly activate their "magical powers", and to receive blessings for the team members for a safe journey to the "extreme environment" awaiting us at Mt. Everest. Sunday night we will camp at Pangboche, just a bit beyond Tengboche as the drought in Nepal has severely depleted water supplies at Tengboche. Monday the team will head for Pheriche, a small hamlet that exists above the tree line in an area Dr. Ken Kamler calls "the home of wind"...high, cold and windy. Because our equipment will be spread our for more than a mile along the trail we may not be able to assemble all the equipment necessary in time to send updates via satellite for the next couple of days. Stay tuned, for there is a lot going on here in the "land of the Yeti". Over the next two days we will move the E-3 team into a spectacular, cold, windy area deep in the Himalayan Range as we continue our research activities and our journey to Mt. Everest.

Scott Hamilton