 Do you get really cold? |
 I am lucky that I seem to stay pretty warm when others get cold. There have been a few cold nights here, but I have a lot of down feather filled clothes to keep me warm. Casey does a good job of keeping warm too. He grew up in Georgia so I often tease him about having Georgia toes because his feet get a little colder than mine.
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I get the impression it takes weeks if not months to get used to the higher altitudes. How about when the climb is complete? Can you return to the lower levels immediately or do you have to go down the mountain in stages as well?
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You are correct about taking a lot of time to acclimatize to high altitude. We are fortunate that not only does going to lower altitudes not cause major problems, it can be a quick cure for altitude related problems that we see up here. When we see altitude related problems, we immediately bring people to lower altitudes.
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Bathroom? |
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Hole in the ground with a barrel (see video)
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Showers/ Bathing? |
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Not Yet! We do have a few wet wipes that we try to keep clean with. Rumor has it that a shower system is being worked on at base camp. |
How many days will it take to Mt. Everest?
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Good question. I wish I knew. We left home on March 17th and if everything goes well we will summit Mt. Everest in the middle of May. People sometimes climb into June… I really hope we are not still here in June!!!!
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How cold does it get on Mt. Everest? |
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Cold…Very Cold. If we went to the summit right now, it would be around -50o F. When we climb in May, we will expect to see temperatures as low as -20o F. In base camp, it gets down to about 10o F and we have seen snow a few times. |
Is climbing Mt. Everest hard? |
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I wish I could say that it is easy, but it is quite hard. The air seems very thin the higher we climb up. Since the air seems thinner, it is hard to breathe and harder to do any type of exercise. The mountain is very steep in parts and takes climbing skills that Casey and I have been practicing for years. |
If Mt. Everest is the highest mountain in the world, what is the highest mountain in the United States? |
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Mt. McKinley in Alaska is the highest in the U.S. (see video) It is 20, 320 ft above sea level. Mt. Whitney is the highest in the continental U.S. at 14,495 ft. Mt Everest is a little taller at 29,035 ft!
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