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Berg Everest back down safe and sound
11:08 a.m. EDT Oct 8, 2003
After a night at Camp III, 7100m, the Berg crew has descended. Brad and Maegan woke up yesterday morning with some fierce headaches and made a beeline for Base Camp. Both arrived safely later on that afternoon.
Wally, Garry, and David opted to stop at Camp II and crash there yesterday evening before heading down to Base Camp today. They figured an extra night of acclimatization up there couldn’t hurt. The trio took time to work with some of their equipment that they plan to use up high.
David fastened foam insulators around the Primus stoves. These stoves are super simple to operate – just screw the burner onto the cartridge, open the valve and light, right? It is much easier than having to pump and prime some of the MSR’s, however; the problem with cartridges is that they are very sensitive to cold. If the fuel (cartridge) is too cold, it’ll be difficult to get the stove going, it just won’t light. Berg’s technique is to insulate the canisters to help retain the heat.
Some folks have been known to put two cartridge stoves into a pot to retain the heat – this is not recommended as blow-ups have definitely happened and the sherpas then refuse to climb with you because of your bad luck. Or if you wire a piece of copper from the burners to the canister, the heat transfers through the metal and warms the fuel – also not recommended as this can cause an explosion. Another technique that we’ve just heard about that works on Everest is to turn on your Oxygen system and place the mask next to the flame to give the stove some more O2 to mix with the fuel.
This works, however, it can also result in your oxygen mask getting torched (happened this year on the North Side) or even worse, a compressed bottle of oxygen exploding. However dangerous, effective, or ineffective these techniques are – climbers will try almost anything to get their stoves to light. You’re really playing with fire, boy, so be carefull.
Berg Adventures has the only South Side expedition this fall. They have a real challenge ahead of them these upcoming weeks having to fix and prepare Everest entirely by themselves. One of the expedition members, Maegan Carney plans to ski down from the summit.
Live image from Everest Camp III, 7100m, courtesy of BergAdventures.com
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