Nathaniel Merriam Monday, May 10 Everest Base Camp, Nepal

Well, it's been a few days since I've posted a journal and I know both of my fans must be betting anxious (thanks mom -- and Julie from Ann Arbor, Michigan).

We're here. Well, of course we're HERE, but when the HERE is Everest Base Camp (EBC), then it becomes more than a simple bit of geographic trivia. As others before me have been shocked to discover, EBC is located on a beautiful garden spot called the Khumbu Glacier.

Yes, that kind of glacier. The entire region is one big chunk of ice that measures a few kilometers from its origin. What that means is that I am currently seated on a block of ice that goes down several thousand feet and even further out in each direction. So it's pretty cold.

Except when it's hot. Which is every afternoon. When the sky is clear and the sun is shining, it feels like you're standing in an oven. You can't strip off enough clothing to keep cool, but the instant a cloud passes over you reach for your long underwear and want to climb in a sleeping bag.

So how do you get to EBC? After all the days of trekking, you wind up in a place called Gorak Shep, which isn't so much a town as it is a building with a big ego. What Gorak Shep does have to offer, however, is not spacious accommodations or fine cuisine, but rather a little mound of sand called Kalapathar. And Kalapathar, my friends, is the best place to see Mt. Everest. You see, despite the fact that Everest is the tallest mountain on earth, it's surrounded by a lot of OTHER really tall mountains that block any view of it. So even at EBC, we can't see Mt Everest

The long and short of it is that if you want to get a photo of Everest, or even a decent look at it, you've got to climb Kalapathar. So that's what I did. Now let's add a disclaimer here that Kalapathar is considered an anthill by Himalayan standards, so no one will be impressed by this. If you can make it to Gorak Shep, you can make it to the top of Kalapathar, although it is an extra 1000 feet of climbing to get to the top. I spent four hours round-trip, which meant everyone else was very worried about me because it's only a three-hour trip (and I'm not exactly Sir Edmund Hillary).

The reason I took so long is that I spend an hour at the top, just looking. Looking up at the mountains, down at the glacier, the frozen lakes, the spires of ice that defy gravity to reach 50 feet or more to the sky. I took photos, too, but mostly I just looked. And it didn't matter how hard it had been to get there, or how cold or windy it was there at 18,000 feet. I was alone on this summit and I understood why people would risk their lives to reach higher peaks. That's not my calling, but I'm happy to have had a taste of it.

Back to the glacier. Just above EBC is the first challenge for anyone who wants to climb the mountain, the Khumbu Icefall. As its name implies, the Khumbu Icefall is an Icefall, which is exactly like a waterfall but slower. The icefall is a slowly churning stream of ice that cracks and pops and crashes and slides and flows in a much more frightening manner than its liquid counterpart. To climb through, a team sets a path of fixed ropes and ladders to climb over, under, and around the mass of twisting blocks that shift every afternoon as the sun warms and melts crucial points.

On the topic of popping and crashing, one unnerving constant of base camp is the avalanches. Whether its a single rock or a thousand it all sounds like it is going to crush you in your sleep.

Sweet dreams from base camp,
Nathaniel