About 15 years ago I was in Nepal considering spending a week hiking to the Everest Base Camp. Because of time constraints, however, I opted against the long trip.
After reading High Times, Kevin Fedarko’s intriguing account of life at the base camp published in this next month’s Outside Magazine (August 2008), I now wished I had.
As it turns out, Everest Base Camp is an amazing amalgamation of nationalities and personalities that comes together for three months of the year in hopes of bagging the world’s tallest peak. The metropolis which arises can grow to 1,000 people and be so eccentric that Fedarko calls it the “Himalayan version of Burning Man.”
Rich Texans, poor Czechs, Polish Playboy Bunnies, and an oddball assortment of other characters all rub elbows here in various degrees of comfort and discomfort–depending upon how much they’ve spent on their expeditions. Base Camp, it appears, has nearly all the comforts of home–including a satellite dish and 360 pound generator one group of climbers had flown in by Russian helicopter. And of course, there is a baseball diamond as well. What base camp would be complete without one?
And then, of course, there is the enormous Sherpa population who are in charge of making sure all these numb-nuts stay alive. Some of their nicknames are rather humorous; the Ice Doctors tend to the dangerous route across the Khumbu Icefall while the Poop Doctors clear out the solid waste from the latrines (charging $1.05 per pound).
My favorite, however are the Butter People. This is what the Sherpas call the pampered western climbers who pay a fortune to have their hands held while “climbing” Everest.
I suppose I would have been a Butter Person, or at least a poser, had I made it to the camp 15 years ago. But I wouldn’t have cared; at least I would have been there to experience all of this.