Canadian Arc’teryx athlete Raphael Slawinski is on Everest at the moment, planning to try a new route on the North Face.
The Arc’teryx team in Vancouver was able to get in touch with Raphael over the weekend via his SAT Phone.
He’s all good – so are the team. They’re shaken up by the quake, of course. He said he’d never felt anything like it before. They all spent the night fully clothed, trying to sleep but anticipating aftershocks.
They are at base camp and will remain there for the next few days as they assess their plans. They are waiting to hear if climbing will be allowed to continue on the North Side. They should hear in the next days if the Chinese authorities will cancel the season on the north face. If climbing is still allowed, they now plan to remain at base camp for a few more days and then move everything up to advanced base camp middle of this week.
Raphael Slawinski Reports From Everest After The Earthquake:
“The day was chilly, with occasional flurries sifting down from a gray sky. We were lounging in the mess tent after lunch, bellies full of couscous and salad, when the earthquake happened. It started as a feeling of unease, of wrongness, like a silently onrushing avalanche. At first we didn’t know what was going on, then someone said, “Earthquake!” We rushed outside of the mess tent. The ground was shaking harder and harder: it was becoming hard to keep your balance. I sat down on the cobbles. The initial eerie silence was broken by the clatter of rocks bouncing down the hillsides above basecamp. Stones emerged from clouds of dust only to be swallowed up again. Long after the shaking stopped we kept asking ourselves, “Can you feel it? Can you?” It was hard to tell the difference between aftershocks and the pounding of blood in our temples.
Small groups congregated between the tents, exchanging rumours and speculation. After the initial panicked minutes, we realized that, in the middle of a large plain, we were safe – as long as the half-frozen lake on the moraines above camp didn’t burst its banks. But what about the friends who’d left in the morning, bound for advanced basecamp? How did they fare? In places the yak trail led between steep banks of unstable rubble. And what about the far more numerous groups on the opposite side of the mountain? Their path ran through the teetering ice towers and yawning crevasses of the Khumbu icefall.
Gradually, snippets of news filtered in over mobile and satellite phones: an earthquake of magnitude 7.9, with an epicentre just outside of Kathmandu. We thought about the narrow streets, the hurriedly built houses, the haphazard wiring. Then we thought of the millions of people who called this chaotic metropolis home. Most of the kitchen staff in basecamp had families in Kathmandu; the Sherpas sent their children to school there. As the afternoon wore on, and the lines to Nepal remained jammed or cut, they talked in low, worried voices.
By dinnertime we were starting to relax. After dinner, to distract ourselves, we started watching “When We Were Kings”. The story of the epic fight between Mohammad Ali and George Foreman, set against the background of post-colonial Africa, was a world away from the dense snow falling beyond the yellow walls of the mess tent.
“Hello?” came from the darkness outside. Dominic, the leader of a neighbouring commercial expedition, stepped inside, the hood and shoulders of his jacked piled with snow. His face was grave face: “We heard that a strong aftershock’s expected in the next couple of hours. All of our members are fully dressed, just in case the lake above basecamp floods.”
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Words and photos by Raph Slawinski
