K2 Base Camp The mountain is changing, rapidly. In the last few days base camp, known as the strip, has been filling up. When we arrived, our only neighbors were two friendly Czech climbers. A few days later the extra-large Russian West Face Expedition established their camp 10 minutes below us. Days later, a nine-person Czech team squeezed their tents between the mini-Czechs' and ours.

 

Base camp seemed cozy when I left for my eight days of re-conning, rope fixing and load shuttling. But now, with about half of the expected 15 (FIFTEEN) teams on the strip, the place is getting noisy, chaotic and bizarre.

Between snow squalls, the Koreans, White Russians, Americans, Italians and Mutts, have arrived. "We've got a problem," Don mumbled one morning, in disbelief. It was enough to arouse us from the mess tent, and send me into a total Jersey punk fury (there are times of mortal danger and Biblical trespass when being raised in northern New Jersey is an asset). 100 porters had stopped amidst our sleeping tents and started erecting dining tents. I let the wrath erupt. It was an Old Testament moment. Porters parted like the Red Sea. An Iranian climber shrank into the crowd. A poor cook boy, with a three word English vocabulary, instantly got the message. The mass of humanity scrambled, half erected tents were hoisted in the air. And the newly arrived expedition was pushed towards the Korean camp.

The other Americans, here to climb the SSE Ridge (the combined 10 person Czech expedition is already at Camp 2) invited us to lunch yesterday. It was Billy Pierson's 50th birthday party. The mess tent was decorated with balloons and misspelled banners overhead and we gathered around a table perched atop a rock floor flooding with streams of melting glacier water.  In a true show of community, whatever we dropped from the table (a slice of onion, a slippery noodle) would surely make its way downstream into the White Russians drinking water. Billy used a cleaver to hack at a goat's leg, while we all wore golden foil crowns atop our fleece hats.

Base camps are always a-buzz with climbing chatter. This gets old. Among our team's strengths: diverse life experiences, eclectic erudition, either too little or too much formal education, and a commitment to play loose with the facts in order to keep a hardened audience's attention. Yesterday we gave an Italian journalist apoplexy when we told him Dick Cheney was headed to Italy to run the disgraced Parmalat Corporation. He hadn't heard any news during his eight-day trek and was so anxious to get caught up, that he believed everything, well until the line about Condi Rice replacing Benedict as Pope.

We have a few more days down low. The weather pattern is unsettled, with daily snow falls, moments of intense sun shine, and a sound track of avalanches thundering from every peak. The next days we will spend like the last few: trying to eat enough to turn our outie bellie buttons back into innies, visiting new and old friends, trying to get the White Russians to smile (just once would be a miracle. maybe it is their drinking water, filtered by the American mess tent, that is making them so stoic), and resting up for the 5 day good weather window that it is promised. (We've taken care of the dirty tasks on our list: Don has shaved his scruffy beard, Bruce bagged up the body and moved it out of the source of the strip's drinking water, and I moved the toilet tent.) We are officially ready for the next adventure, even if it has to do with climbing.

Chris Warner