Major Stores and Equipment

By Steve Jones

Alongside Ben Sherwood, I’ve won the enviable task of making sure all the correct stores go up the mountain to the correct camps for use at the required moment. It’s a difficult task as trying to keep track of what is where and who is carrying what along the ridge to the different camps is a challenge when you can’t actually be at each camp to supervise the activity. The trick is to forecast what equipment is required at each camp. This requires knowledge of the route and the technical difficulties involved in getting to each camp in turn. There’s little point in rushing on to Camp 3 for instance if there isn’t enough rope and climbing hardware already at Camp 2 to secure the route between the two sites.

We also need to get enough of our personal climbing equipment to the right camp to enable us to operate safely as individuals. Each individual will have his own personal equipment but will use the sleeping bags at each Camp on a communal basis – ‘hot bunking’ in naval terms. This might seem a rather unhygienic arrangement but on the mountain (and just like in submarines) it works well and saves undue effort to get individual sleeping bags all the way up the mountain and, at this stage of the expedition, we are all friends! Cookers and rations are also pre-positioned to meet the needs of the mountain group. Thus, individual sleeping bags and mats remain at Base Camp which is one reason it is so nice to get back down to BC, have a wash and then get into your own sleeping bag for a good nights rest.

One of the most important commodities that need moving are rations and their use and movement needs constant monitoring. Freeze dried, light weight rations are only for the more advanced camps, higher up on the mountain. This is also true of the more desirable chocolates and treats for day time snacks. This can be difficult to police as certain mainstream brands are in more demand by the team than some of the other options that we have constructed ourselves. However, if all the ‘Gucci’ items of food are eaten in the wrong order, then when more calories or lighter food are required for the higher and more technically demanding sections, the expedition summit bid (in extremis) could be compromised. This is why the monitoring of the stores is so critical and it actually ranges from such things as AAA batteries for head-torches, to radios, to toilet paper. It is one reason why Ben and I have been so busy over the past several days trying to co-ordinate the movement of the stores up the hill; as we are now pushing the route to Camp 2, which is a long, long way from Base Camp, the need to be exact in forecasting the requirement is ever more essential. It has been possible to generate a moment of humour from what is typically quite a dull activity though, I have been telling the team that all the best food is going to Camp 4 and, therefore, if they want it they are going to have to work for it! However, as I am heading out to ABC this morning I will undoubtedly soon have a taste of my own medicine – quite literally.

As an aside it might be worth noting some of the equipment requirements that are being moved across the mountain. We have over 4km of rope that is being used in various stages of the climb to make the route safe (or at least as safe as possible). We have over 500 bars of chocolate being transported across the ridge (I can’t understand why more ladies don’t get involved in mountaineering with figures like this). Over 200 gas canisters for the cookers will be used over the next 6 weeks to enable us to reach the summit. In all, we had 100 porters help us carry all the equipment into Base Camp and the rough weight of the load was approximately 2 metric tonnes. There will be a lot less in weight going back because of the food and fuel being used, however, we are obliged and want to strip the mountain of our presence when we finally head back to Kathmandu. To these ends, and in keeping with an environmentally aware attitude, we will take every bit of our rubbish back to where it can be disposed of correctly. As an example of this ‘green’ attitude we have paid a significant deposit on all the gas canisters which will only be returned when we present the used items at the our point of exit of the Barun-Makalu national park.

I hope this provides a brief insight into the whole business of running a mountain expedition. If you have any questions then please email me through the website and I will do my best to answer them when I am back in the Base Camp………