Life at Everest Base Camp

Just over three weeks ago I left Everest Base Camp (EBC), leaving Robin to tackle his adventure, and it feels like it’s been a lot longer. With two thirds of the Everest climbing season finished, the teams are waiting patiently, and now anxiously, for their “weather window”, the first of which is taking place now (May 15). With several teams high on the mountain as I write, there are still a good number waiting at Base Camp for a longer opportunity to achieve their dreams.

Most climbers descend to lower villages to sleep in a real bed and have real showers when there are long chunks of time without much to do; however, as per my previous posts those beds and showers are still a far cry from first world expectations. The bulk of their time since late April has still been spent at EBC. So, as a self-declared expert because I stayed three whole nights at the heel of the Khumbu Glacier, I thought I’d enlighten you on what you can expect from life at EBC.

 Our Summit Climb EBC Tents

With our chosen expedition agency, we experienced a little bit of "Instagram vs Reality" as many of the posts under #everest2019 which I had been following have been from the larger, more expensive expeditions. Life at EBC when you spend over 70K of any major currency is certainly more comfortable than when you've gone the budget route. Disclaimer here that the budget route is still a small fortune where that money could be a nice down payment on a house. The adage goes "you get what you pay for"; however, I'd argue that you don't get what you don't pay for in this instance. I must also declare that we were/ are well looked after with shelter, food, Sherpa and smiles, so it's not like we were hard done by.

So what is it like? 

Map of EBC courtesy of AlanArnette.com

Everest Base Camp is set on the heel of the Khumbu Glacier, where the ground is mainly rocks vs. glacial ice. A glacier being a dynamic environment, the camp shapeshifts throughout the climbing season. As per my fellow teammate Ian's account from his blog :

"My original tent had become largely uninhabitable as the glacial ice beneath it melted, creating a small 2ft x 5ft plateau in the center of the tent that I slept on in the fetal position, while the rest of the tent (and my gear) sagged below me by a couple feet."

The tents of various shapes and sizes are set atop the rocky base where the Sherpa team arrive before the climbers to try and smooth out the ground as best they can to set up the tents for the climbers’ arrival. There are clusters of tents arranged according to the expedition agency spread across about a 2km length and ½ a km width. The tents within the expedition group are relatively close together- let’s say if you thought the noise carried in the Tea House plywood walled rooms, you’ve got even less privacy at EBC. 

 EBC panoramic view. Tents to the left, right, and behind me.

Personal tents are of the domed, spacious 2-man nature allowing space for one fully grown white adult male, average age 40 (typical demographic) and his 2 large duffel bags. Squeeze a partner in there and you quickly boot one of your bags to the porch of your tent. If you paid for the premium expedition, then you have a rectangular tent where you might be able to stand up. If you paid for luxury digs, then that might even have a small generator-powered heater or at least at turn down service including hot water bottle in your sleeping bag when you return after dinner. 

 Insta vs Reality: what your money buys you

Common room tents include the kitchen tents, separate from the meal tents, separate from the yoga/ movie theatre tents and increase in size. The first two tend to be of the barrack, rectangle style, the latter is a big old dome with a window frontage overlooking the Khumbu Icefall. I can’t say that I personally saw the dome tent of the Climb the Seven Summits team, but I have seen this on Instragram. Again, Instagram vs. Reality: Posh camping has tables, chairs with backs, rugs, and generator heating. Reality of your budget trek: tables, tarps, camping seats, and heating generated by body heat… oh to be fair, also a heater that sits on a gas bottle.

Everything except the kitchen sink... because it doesn't exist. The budget way of working.

Climbing the Seven Summits Common Tent

There is one other style of tent that is dotted around EBC, and that is the toilet tent. As you would expect, a 2m tall, 1m x 1m base to give you some privacy as you go about your business. The tent and base are elevated with a collection receptacle underneath. Reality camping means a quad workout as you squat over a plastic barrel used to capture the waste, and brought down the mountain at a later date (you think your job is bad!). Posh camping you get a makeshift seat built up above the barrel. The toilet tents are usually down wind/ stream/ hill of the camps; however, your camp might be down wind/ stream/ hill of another group’s facilities.

We took a tour de base camp on our first morning which allowed us to take in the scale of the temporary village, as well as the scale of the 7000 - 8000m peaks surrounding us. One enters EBC off a main path, which then splits up and down the slant of the land. This path is frequented by expedition members trying to find their facilities, but also yaks bringing supplies to the groups daily.

 Pony express in this case. The major highway was just at the foot of our tent.

Natural surroundings 

There are natural sculptures of rock on ice dotted throughout the camp reminding you that you are a visitor in a natural environment. The camp is lined with relics of the glacier, towers of ice and snow acting as a playground for the aspiring summiteers to train. You are absolutely dwarfed by the sheer scale of the surrounding challenges, and yet the top of Everest is still not even visible. What you do see are seracs delicately hanging off the sides of Nuptse to the right, Everest to the left, and Pumori at the back (as you face the Khumbu Ice Fall); you might even see, and you certainly hear, avalanches breaking from these seracs throughout your stay at EBC.

He's going that-a-way: over that ice fall and over to the left behind that peak

This rock was the size of a small car.

The purpose of the tour de base camp was to seek out some of the potential luxuries and necessities that we might have access to: WiFi and Medical Help. In the center of the village, up from where our camp lie, there are both an ER and satellite communications tents. Just outside of the comms tent, there is a rock, now dubbed ‘WiFi Rock’ which is the only place our team is able to get any sort of 3G/4G reception. This allows for patchy whatsapp calls, descent whatsapp text messaging, and yet does not really allow for upload of photos nor video. If you do sweet-talk or likely bribe one of the people manning the comms tent, though, you might just be able to update your Instagram. Alternatively, you can choose to walk 1.5 hours down/ 2 hours back to the nearest village Gorekshep which does have a reliable internet signal. Queue another dose of Instagram vs Reality here where it seems that the majority of the pictured posts on Instagram are coming from the luxury expeditions which leaves me to surmise that they have their own comms tents… again, you don’t get what you don’t pay for, or in this case you don’t get what you pay for when the WiFi card costs $75 USD for 2GB of data.

 ER tent rates. Selfies $5.

Surroundings described, how is the time passed, you ask?

When expedition members aren’t practising their jumarring or taking part in an acclimatisation hike up one of the surrounding monoliths, there is plenty of time to get some R&R within the regular schedule of basecamp meals. Breakfast at 8:00am, lunch just after noon, and dinner at 6; each meal prefaced with a selection of hot beverages. I rediscovered hot chocolate, or hot chocolate water during my time at EBC, where in wishing to remain hydrated and avoid the hard caffeine of tea or instant coffee, I tipped some chocolate powder into my stainless steel camp mug with hot water and relished in the emotional warmth of the chocolatey extra calories.

Meals in our camp were pretty tasty, and consisted of extended versions of what we had eaten on our trek up, minus the cakes and in our case, replaced with a few pieces of tinned fruit. If you paid the premium prices, I did see a few instances of gas-powered ovens in kitchen tents. If you paid for luxury, the rumour is that top chefs are even flown in to prepare a few meals for the patrons. I couldn’t comment on the amount of variety, as the three days in which I was at EBC, the only repeats that I ate were from the communal coconut biscuit/cookie pile and tinned fruit dessert. 

After breakfast we were urged to turn out our sleeping bags and hook them to the outside top of our tents to allow them to air and dry. As you exhale in the frigid air of the night, your breath is captured and suspended within the confines of your tent. When you wake up and move about, you undoubtedly knock the fine crystalline layer onto your sleeping bag and jackets. As well, the warmth of the sun from 7am onwards tends to melt the crystals which now become like a dew. In addition to your sleeping bag, other items you would choose to expose to the heat and light are your camping mats, washed (or not) laundry, and solar batteries leaving the camps to look a bit like a yard sale. You might go for a walk to WiFi Rock, you definitely sit outside to enjoy the warmth of the sun. You might choose to take a shower from the bag of hot water the Kitchen Staff will fill for you in the shower tent (similar to the toilet tents). You might choose to recoil from civilisation as your head could be pounding as it acclimatises to the lack of available oxygen in the air. 

Between lunch and dinner, as the temperature begins to drop, you reassemble your tent, use the light and warmth to assess your clothing situation for the following day, take some time for yourself to read or write, and/or begin to speculate with your fellow team members on how to solve the many problems in the world. Remembering the typical demographic at EBC, one might argue that these perspectives are not going to be THAT different from those of the majority political powers making decisions today. 

Somewhere near 5pm, you might migrate to the dinner tent to get a good seat and sneak in a hand or two of cards before the first of your three course dinner is served (soup + main meal + tinned fruit). After dinner, you certainly stay a little while longer to play more cards and listen to the plan for the following day. The main motivation for hanging around after dinner is that the dinner tent is warm comparatively to your lonely personal tent. Warm with company, but also physically warm. By the evenings the temperatures have dropped below zero. Getting changed (or not) to get into your down cocoon IS brisk, and lonely once you’ve tucked in for the night.

Dinner example

Circa 8pm, most of the camps are quiet- that mountain air does tucker you out! If you choose to emerge from your tent for some reason (like you don’t have a pee bottle), it is surprising how light the environment appears. Moonlight reflects off the surrounding snow caps and glaciers, allowing you to manoeuvre around the camp without the need for a head-torch. Tents are lit like lanterns by the head-torches of climbers who are not yet ready to catch their zzz’s.

Everest at night

If you weren’t ready for bed at 8pm, then you might spend a bit of time reading or watching whatever viewing device you brought, stocked with downloadable content, powered by the portable batteries that you charged in the morning daylight. Eventually you tire, likely from the lack of oxygen outside and inside your tent, and you fall asleep. Even as you sleep, you notice that it's difficult to breathe. Just shifting within your cocoon from one side to the other to prevent that jagged rock underneath from bruising your hip or shoulder, you are left panting and taking big gulps of air for the next few breaths.

In the night the camp is quiet from human activity and the sounds you do hear are the deep rumblings of avalanches and the ice cracking beneath you. You hope these are sounds of your dreams, but you confirm with your fellow climbers in the morning that you all heard the same normative yet frightful sounds. 

This is an account of my few days spent at the heel of the Khumbu Glacier and although it was only a few days, it gives you an insight to the month that potentially 800+ people are experiencing during the Everest climbing season in Nepal.