Camp Setting - House-warming

Ivan Dusharin and Pomyatukha

DUSHARIN:

On the 13th of July there was an "exodus" from the lower base camp. According to the plan of Volodya Shuvalov, 8 members of the team were walking the whole day and came up to the ABC. The luggage was heavy (25-30kg). It was the hardest day, so it was a clever decision to have some rest before. Having reached the place, people started preparing the areas to set our tents using flagstones and pebbles. Two or three people needed 2-3 hours to prepare each place. The other fellows carried things from the lower to the intermediate camp. Next day they went to the ABC and took the yak with them. The animal showed its skills getting through the glacier. So the "meat" came first and by its own legs.

Advanced base camp

On the 14th of July the Russian expedition gathered at the base camp under K2. The preparation, meetings, traveling through China, everything had been left behind. According to the Russian tradition we decided to celebrate that, and invited the guys from the international expedition. It would be strange for us to get to the edge of the earth, to meet like-minded people there and to get settled nearby calmly. The most interesting thing happened with Carlos Buhler. It turned out that we went to the Soviet-American expedition of 1978 to the peak of Communism together. First, he didn't recognize me. Eighteen years had passed away from the days of that expedition, and when Carlos remembered everything, he started hugging me.

VOLKOV:
While talking with Krzysztof Wielicki and Carlos Buhler, we learned a lot about the details the international expedition had done. They had already set the first camp on the ridge of the mountain and fixed the ropes till the second camp. Carlos had drawn a detailed scheme of the lower part of the route and explained how to find the beginning of the fixed ropes at the glacier. There was another thing we couldn't understand. They were trying to persuade us that there was no more space for our camp at the slope. It had been already occupied.

When evening came the fellows started gathering together, but the Polish guys didn't come yet. They came in an hour, and we figured out that they had been using the Pakistan time, while we used the local time. In fact, there is a great confusion with time in China. Officially China uses Peking time, although there are at least 3 different time zones from the geographical point of view. To start a conversation we drank a little. The night was unexpectedly warm and we drank two bottles of vodka and 1.5 liters of pure alcohol. I was translating anecdotes from Russian into English and vice verse. Everyone was laughing.

Sergei Penzov is telling jokes

DUSHARIN:

The alcohol was over, but the fellows didn't go away. I went to the tent of our doctor, Luba Shvedova, to grab a ginseng tincture (375g), because it wasn't wise to get out another flask of alcohol. Otherwise everyone would get drunk, and wouldn't be able to work next morning.

Volkov's diary

Dusharin's diary