Chapter 10 Chapter Eight Battalion No. 1

△Elevation 5944 meters, April 16, 1996 * In the ordinary sense of enjoyment, I doubt that anyone in the world would claim to enjoy high altitude life.There is a certain obstinate satisfaction in struggling to climb high, no matter how slow you are, but climbers must spend most of their time in the mess of the alpine camp. At this time, there is no comfort in climbing.Smoking is impossible, and I want to vomit after eating.In order to keep the burden to a minimum, no written works are allowed except for the labels on the cans.Sardine oil, condensed milk, and syrup splattered everywhere.Except for a few brief moments (when we were not in the mood to enjoy the view), all we saw was the frustrating chaos of the tent and the peeling, bearded face of our companion, whose stifled breathing was often drowned out by the sound of the wind.Worst of all is the feeling of utter incompetence, incapable of coping with any potential crisis.A year ago, just the thought of taking part in this adventure would have thrilled me like an impossible dream, and I often look back on my intoxication for solace.However, the high altitude has an impact on the body and mind, and human intelligence will become dull and insensitive. My only wish is to complete the annoying tasks and return to a place with a more reasonable climate below the mountain.

Shipton "On That Hill" Eric Shjpton, Upon That Mountain □□□ We rested at the base camp for two days. On Tuesday, April 16th, we climbed to the icefall in the dark early in the morning to acclimatize again.I nervously walked through the frozen, groaning, messy ice and found that my breathing was not as labored as it had been the first time I went up the glacier.My body has started to adjust to the altitude.Still, my fear of the serac falling and crushing me remained unabated. I wish the big ice tower hanging at 5,791 meters was down now and some witty guy on Team Fisher called it a mousetrap.But the serac still stood precariously, leaning even more than last time.I rushed to climb out of the shadow of the serac, and the cardiovascular flow reached the safe limit again. After reaching the top of the tower, I fell to my knees again, gasping for breath, shaking with too much adrenaline in my veins.

When doing the first altitude acclimatization, we stayed in Camp 1 for less than an hour before returning to the base camp. This time it was different. Hall asked us to spend the night in Camp 1 on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then continue to Camp 2. Stay in the second camp for three nights and then turn around and go down the mountain. I arrived at Camp No. 1 at 9 o'clock in the morning. Our mountaineering Shebatou 1 Duoji 2 was digging a platform on the frozen snow slope for us to pitch our tents.He was twenty-nine years old, with a thin build and delicate features. He was shy and melancholy by nature, but his physical strength was astonishing.While waiting for my teammate to arrive, I picked up the spare shovel and helped him dig the ground.I was exhausted after digging for a few minutes, so I had to sit down and rest, which made the Sherpas laugh.He sarcastically said: Qiang, are you not feeling well?This is only Battalion No. 1, only 6,000 meters high.The air here is still thick.

Note 1: There is a Sherpa head of the base camp on the Hall team, named Zelin, who is responsible for managing all the Sherpas employed by the team.The climber Dorje listened to Zelin's command, but when the Sherpa left the base camp and climbed up, Dorje could take care of the climber Sherpa.author note Note 2: Not to be confused with the Sherpa of the South African team of the same name.Dorje, Pampa, Lakpa, Zeling, Topchi, Dawa, Nima, and Pasang are all common Sherpa names.At least two Sherpas on Mount Everest in 1996 shared each of the above names, often causing confusion.author note

Dorji comes from Panpoqi, which is 3,962 meters above sea level. There are only a few stone-walled houses in the village and potato terraces clinging to the rugged hillside.His father, a respected Sherpa mountaineer, taught him the basics of mountaineering at an early age, giving him the skills to make a living.When Dorje was a teenager, his father lost his sight due to cataracts, and he had to drop out of school to support his family. In 1984, he worked as a cook boy for a group of Western hikers, and he caught the attention of a Canadian couple, Pod and Nelson.According to Pod, I miss my little boy, and after I got to know Dorje well, I thought of him when I saw him.Dorje is smart, committed, eager to learn, and conscientious almost too much.He was carrying a lot of stuff and had nosebleeds every day at high altitudes.I keep an eye on him.

Ms. Pod and Mr. Nelson sought permission from Dorje's mother to start sponsoring Dorje's return to school.I will never forget his entrance exam (to the District Junior School set up by Sir Hillary in Khumbu).He is small in stature and has not yet reached puberty.We squeezed into a small room with the principal and four teachers.During the interview, Dorje stood in the middle, his knees trembling, trying to recall what he had learned before.We all worked hard, but the school accepted him on the condition that he had to sit with the lower grades. Dorje achieved good grades and completed the equivalent of an eighth grade education before leaving school to return to work in the mountaineering and fitness industries.Ms Pod and Mr Nelson have returned to Khumbu several times to see him grow.For the first time in his life, Pod recalled, he had good food and began to grow tall and strong.He learned how to swim in the swimming pool in Kathmandu and reported to us happily.He learned to ride a bicycle around the age of twenty-five, and was briefly obsessed with Madonna's music.We knew he had really grown up when he gave us a carefully selected Tibetan rug as a gift for the first time.He wants to be the giver, not the receiver.

After Dorje's reputation for strength and wit spread among Western climbers, he was promoted to head Sherpa and worked for Hall on Everest in 1992.Before Hall's expedition set off in 1996, Dorje had reached the summit three times.Hall called him my main force with respect and affection, and mentioned several times that he believed Dorje's role was crucial to the success of our expedition. When the last group of my teammates walked into the No. 1 Battalion, the sun was shining brightly, but there was a tall cirrus cloud coming from the south at noon, and at three o'clock dense clouds hovered over the glacier, and the snowflakes slammed into the tents .The wind and snow blew all night. In the morning, I climbed out of the tent shared by Han Sen and me. The glacier had been covered with fresh snow tens of centimeters thick.Avalanches of snow rumbled down the steep walls above, but our camp was safe from the snow rolling this way.

When dawn broke on Thursday, April 18, the sky cleared up. We packed up our things and set off for the No. 2 Camp, which was 6.5 kilometers away and was more than 500 meters high.The route goes up the gentle slope of the West Cirque, which is the highest square canyon on earth, and it can also be said to be a horseshoe-shaped pass carved out by the Khumbu Glacier in the heart of the Everest Mountains.The 7,860-meter-high Nuptse Mountains form the right wall of the West Cirque, the huge southwestern wall of Mount Everest forms its left wall, and the wide and frozen Lhotse Mountains loom over the top.

When we set off from Camp 1, the temperature was terribly low, and my hands were hard and painful claws, but after the first rays of sunlight hit the glacier, the ice wall of the West Cirque collected and expanded like a giant solar oven. Radiant heat energy.I broke into a sweat, fearing that I would have a severe migraine like the last time I had at base camp, so I stripped down to my long underwear and stuffed a handful of snow under my baseball cap.For the next three hours I worked my way up the glacier at a steady pace, stopping only occasionally for a sip of water, to add as soon as the shards of snow in my hat melted into my tangled hair.

At an altitude of 6,400 meters, I was dizzy from the heat and saw a large object wrapped in blue plastic beside the trail.The high altitude has damaged the gray matter of my brain, and it took me a minute or two to figure out that it was a human corpse.Shocked and confused, I stared at it for several minutes.I asked Hall that night, and he said he wasn't sure, but guessed the dead man was a Sherpa who died three years earlier. The No. 2 Battalion has an elevation of 6,492 meters, and a total of 120 tents are scattered on the bare moraine rocks at the edge of the glacier.The high altitude of the place is such a malevolent force that I feel like I've had a bad hangover from too much red wine.I was not feeling well, unable to eat or read. For the next two days, I lay in the tent with my head in my hands and tried to be as inactive as possible.On Saturday, I felt a little better, so I climbed to a place more than 300 meters higher than the camp, exercised, and accelerated to adapt to the height.When I arrived at the source of the West Cirque, more than 40 meters away from the main road, I saw another corpse in the snow, which should be the lower half of the corpse.The style of clothing and old-fashioned hiking boots showed that the deceased was European, and the body had been lying on the mountain for at least ten or fifteen years.

I was shocked for hours at the sight of the first body, but the shock of seeing the second body wore off almost immediately.Passing climbers rarely take a second look at a dead body.There seems to be a tacit understanding on the mountain, everyone pretends that these withered corpses are not real, that is, no one has the courage to admit what they are using as a bargaining chip in exchange for being here. On Monday, April 22, a day after returning from Camp No. 2 to Base Camp, Harris and I walked to the South African team camp to meet their players and learn a little about why they had become such social outcasts.Their camp was fifteen minutes down the glacier from our tent, on top of a glacier-remnant knoll.Nepalese and South African flags flew from two tall aluminum flagpoles, along with advertising banners for Kodak Films, Apple Computer and other sponsors.Harris poked his head under their dining room tent and asked with the most charming smile, Hi, is anyone home? It turned out that Woodall, Casey, and Herold were walking down from the No. 2 Camp. At the moment, they were in the Khumbu Icefall, but Woodall's girlfriend Gudan and his brother Philip were present.Also in the restaurant tent was an enthusiastic young woman who introduced herself as Dexun and immediately invited Harris and me in for tea.The three members didn't seem to take Woodall's misconduct and reports of the expedition's imminent disintegration to heart. Ms. Dexun pointed to the nearby ice tower, where several members of the expeditionary force were practicing ice climbing techniques. She said enthusiastically, "It was my first ice climbing a few days ago, and I found it very exciting.I hope to go to the Khumbu Icefall in a few days.I was going to ask her about Woodall's dishonesty and how she felt about learning that her name wasn't on the Everest permit, but she was so pleasant and innocent that I stopped asking.We chatted for twenty minutes, and Harris asked the whole team to come over to our camp for drinks in the evening, including Woodall. I returned to our camp to find Hall, Dr. Caroline, and Fisher's team doctor, Ingrid, talking anxiously over the radio to someone higher up in the hills.Earlier, when Fisher was on his way down from the No. 2 Camp to the Base Camp, he met Topchi, a Sherpa in his team, sitting on a glacier at an altitude of 6,400 meters.Topchi is a thirty-eight-year-old mountaineer from the Lovalin Valley. He has large gaps in his teeth and a gentle nature. He has been carrying things above the base camp and performing other tasks for three days, but his Sherpa teammates complain that he often sits idle. , did not do the job well. When Fisher questioned Topch, he admitted that he had been feeling weak, that his feet were weak, and that he had been out of breath for more than two days, so Fisher directed him to come down to Base Camp immediately.However, Sherpa culture advocates masculinity, and many men are extremely reluctant to admit that they are weak.Sherpas shouldn't suffer from altitude sickness, not to mention that Lovalin is famous for producing strong climbers, and the people there shouldn't suffer from it.If a man has altitude sickness and admits it publicly, he will be blacklisted in the future and will not be hired for an expedition. Therefore, Topchi ignored Fisher's order and refused to go down the mountain. Instead, he went to the No. 2 Camp to spend the night. When Topchitch arrived and walked into the tent that afternoon, he was delirious, stumbling drunkenly, and coughing up pink, blood-tinged froth. These symptoms suggested severe alpine pulmonary edema, a very elusive disease. And there is a risk of death, usually caused by climbing too high and too fast and filling the lungs with fluid3.The only cure for alpine pulmonary edema is a rapid descent to low altitude, and if the patient remains at high altitude for a long time, it is likely to be fatal. Note 3: It is generally believed that the root cause of the problem is hypoxia, caused by excessive pressure in the pulmonary arteries, which allows the arteries to leak fluid into the lungs.author note Hall insisted that once we got above base camp, all of us had to stay together, under the close supervision of our guides.Fisher was different. He advocated that during the high adaptation period, clients should be allowed to go up and down the mountain independently. As a result, when the people in the No. 2 Battalion saw that Topch was seriously ill, Fisher had four clients present, including Cruise, Peter, Reeve and Madsen, without a guide.It fell to Cliff and Madsen to mobilize to rescue Topchi.Madsen is a 33-year-old ski patroller from Poplar, Colorado. He had never climbed above 4,300 meters before this expedition. This time, his girlfriend Charlotte, a veteran Himalayan climber, persuaded him He participated. I went into Hall's mess tent, and Dr. Caroline was radioing someone in Battalion 2 to give Topuchy acetazolamide, dexamethasone, and ten milligrams of sublingual nifedipine. , I know the dangers involved.Still give him to tell you that before we send him down the mountain, he will most likely die of alpine pulmonary edema, and nifedipine, although it will bring his blood pressure down to dangerous levels, is much safer.Please, trust me!Give him medicine!faster! No medicine seemed to help, nor did Topchi give him supplemental oxygen or put him in a Gamow bag.A Gamow bag is an inflated plastic chamber the size of a coffin that raises the air pressure to levels comparable to those at low altitudes.As the daylight faded, Cliff and Madsen filled the snowmobile with a deflated Gamow bag and dragged Topchi down with difficulty. Base camp climbed up and came to pick them up halfway. At sunset, Beidleman met Topchi near the top of the Khumbu Icefall and took over the rescue, allowing Cliff and Madsen to return to the second battalion to continue acclimating to the altitude.Beidleman recalls that the Sherpa patient, Topuchy, had so much fluid in his lungs that his breath looked like a straw sipping a milkshake from the bottom of a cup.Halfway down the icefall, Topchi took off his oxygen mask and reached over to clear some snot from the inlet valve.When the hand was pulled out, I shone a headlight on his glove, and the glove was completely red, soaking up the blood he had coughed into the oxygen mask.Then I shone a light on his face, and it was also bloodstained. Bedleman went on, and Topchi met my eyes, and I could see that he was very frightened.I turned around and lied to him that the blood came from a wound on his lip and told him not to worry.This made him a little calmer, and we continued down.Topchi couldn't move too much, otherwise the edema would accelerate, so Beidleman picked him up several times on the way down the mountain and walked with him on his back.It was past midnight when they reached base camp. The next Tuesday morning, Fisher considered paying $5,000 to $10,000 to get a helicopter to evacuate Topchi from the base camp to Kathmandu.But both Fisher and Dr. Ingrid believe that now that Topch is at a place more than 1,100 meters lower than the No. 2 Battalion, the situation will improve rapidly. Usually, a descent of just over 900 meters is enough to completely eliminate alpine pulmonary edema. get well.As a result, Topchi did not evacuate by plane, but was walked down the valley by someone.However, not far below the base camp, he fell to the ground due to exhaustion, and everyone had to take him back to the mountain idiot team's camp for treatment. His condition continued to deteriorate throughout the day.Dr. Ingrid wanted to put him back in the Gamow bag, but Topch refused, saying he didn't have alpine pulmonary edema or any altitude sickness.They used the radio to find American doctor Leach, a well-known doctor in the field of altitude sickness, who was practicing medicine at the clinic of the Himalayan Rescue Association in Perize Village that spring. They asked him to rush to the base camp to assist in the treatment of Topchi. At this time, Fisher had already left for the No. 2 Camp. Because Madsen was overworked dragging Topch down the West Cirque, and he himself suffered from mild alpine pulmonary edema and fell ill, Fisher was going to take him down the mountain.During Fisher's absence, Dr. Ingrid consulted with other doctors at the base camp, but she was forced to make some big decisions herself, and a fellow doctor once said she was overwhelmed. Ingrid is only twenty-five or six years old, and she does not climb mountains herself. She has just completed her residency in family medicine and has done a lot of voluntary medical rescue work in the foothills of eastern Nepal, but she has never treated altitude sickness.A few months ago, Fisher was in Kathmandu to apply for the Everest permit. The two met by chance, and then Fisher invited her to join the upcoming Everest expedition as a team doctor and base camp manager. Although she had written to Fisher in January expressing hesitation about his offer, she eventually accepted the unpaid job and arrived in Nepal at the end of March, hoping to help the expedition reach the summit.But she hadn't expected to manage the base camp and attend to the medical needs of twenty-five or so people at the same time. (By contrast, Hall paid two experienced full-time staffers, team doctor Carolyn and base camp manager Helen, to do the work that Ingrid did alone without pay).To add insult to injury, Dr. Ingrid herself was not well adapted to high altitudes. During her stay at the base camp, she often had severe headaches and was out of breath. On Tuesday morning, Topch wanted to go down the valley, but he was brought back to the base camp due to exhaustion. Although his condition continued to deteriorate, no one put back the oxygen mask for him. He stubbornly insisted that he was not ill, which was also one of the reasons.At seven o'clock that night, Dr. Leach ran up from the village of Perize and strongly advised Dr. Ingrid to give Topuchy the maximum flow of oxygen immediately, and then call for a helicopter to pick up the crew. At this time, Topchi was sometimes conscious and sometimes unconscious, and it was very difficult to breathe.The expedition asked for a helicopter to take him away on the morning of Wednesday, April 20, but the clouds and snowstorm were too strong to fly, so Topchi was put in a basket and carried down by Sherpas down the glacier to Perry. Dr. Ze and Dr. Ingrid also accompanied her to take care of her. Hall frowned that afternoon, looking very worried.Topchi was in dire condition, he said.Rarely have I seen pulmonary edema as severe as his.They should have flown him out yesterday, when he still had a chance.If it was a Fisher client rather than a Sherpa who got sick, I don't think the treatment would be so hasty.By the time they had brought Topchi to the village of Perizet, it might have been too late to save his life. After a twelve-hour walk from base camp to Perize village, Topchi arrived at the Himalayan Rescue Society clinic on Wednesday evening. Although the altitude was only 4,267 meters (lower than the village where he had lived all his life), his His condition continued to deteriorate, and Dr. Ingrid had to force him into a pressurized Gamow bag despite his objections.Topchi didn't understand the benefits of the pressurized cabin, and was very frightened. He asked to call a lama and put a prayer book in the bag as a companion, before letting others zip him up and put him in a closed bag. For the Gamow bag to function properly, the chaperone must constantly inject fresh air into the bag with a foot pump.By Wednesday night, Dr. Ingrid was exhausted from caring for Topuchy for forty-eight hours without sleep, so she handed over the responsibility of filling the bag to some of Topuchy's Sherpa friends.As she dozed, a Sherpa spotted Topchi bubbling from the bag's plastic window, apparently not breathing. Dr. Ingrid woke up frightened by the news, immediately tore open the bag, performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and called Dr. Silver, a volunteer from the Himalayan Rescue Association.Silver inserted a tube into Topuchy's trachea and began pumping air into his lungs with a rubber first aid bag, or hand pump, and Topuchy breathed again, but at least four or five years apart. Minutes without oxygen entering his brain. Two days later, on Friday, April 26, when the weather finally improved enough to carry people by helicopter, Topchi was taken to a hospital in Kathmandu, where doctors declared him severely brain damaged.At this point Topchi was not much better than a vegetable.In the next few weeks, he gradually withered away in the hospital, staring blankly at the ceiling, his arms curled up at his sides, his muscles atrophied, and his weight dropped to less than 36 kilograms.He later died in mid-June, leaving behind his wife and four daughters in the village of Rovalin. Oddly enough, most Everest climbers are less aware of Topchi's plight than the thousands who live far from the mountain.The news was sent through the network, and it seemed surreal to those of us in the base camp.A teammate calling home on a satellite phone, for example, might hear about what the South African team is up to from an internet-frequent spouse in New Zealand or Michigan, USA. At least five websites published live reports4 written by special correspondents at Everest Base Camp.The South African team has a website, as does Duff's International Business Expedition.PBS's Nova has launched an elaborate, informative website featuring daily updates from Clarke and renowned Everest historian Shalked, both members of the IMAX expedition. (The IMAX expedition, led by award-winning filmmaker and mountaineering expert Brishaws, is going to shoot a $5.5 million IMAX documentary on Everest for the screen. Bath climbed Everest in 1985, is Bridgers served as his guide.) Fisher's expedition had more than two correspondents delivering online news for two competing websites. Note 4: While they tout a direct, interactive link between the Everest slopes and the World Wide Web, the base camp cannot directly connect to the Internet due to technological limitations.Instead, correspondents transmit stories by voice or fax via satellite phone, and the stories are typed and sent to computers for online dissemination by editors in New York, Boston and Seattle.Emails are picked up in Kathmandu, printed, and shipped to base camp in yaks.Similarly, the photos on the Internet are first shipped in yaks, and then sent to New York by air freight.Internet chat sessions are conducted via satellite phone with a typist in New York.author note Jane, who reports daily by phone for Outdoors Online 5, is one of the correspondents on Fisher's team, but she's not a client, and she's not allowed to climb up from base camp.However, another Internet correspondent of the Fisher Expedition is a client who intends to go all the way to the summit and send a daily newsletter for NBC Interactive along the way.Her name was Sandy, and she made a vivid impression and generated gossip like no one else on the Hill. Note 5: Several magazines wrongly reported that I was a correspondent of "Online Outdoors".The reason is that Jane interviewed me at base camp and posted the interview on the "Online Outdoors" website.Actually, I have nothing to do with Online Outdoors.I was entrusted by "Outdoor" magazine, which is an independent magazine based in Santa Fe, Mexico. It only has a loose cooperative relationship with "Online Outdoor" to publish a certain version of the magazine on the computer network.But "Outdoor" magazine and "Online Outdoors" are independent, and I didn't even know that "Online Outdoors" sent a special correspondent to Mount Everest until I arrived at the base camp.author note Sandy, a millionaire socialite climber, is making her third attempt to climb Everest.This year she is more determined than ever to reach the summit in order to complete her well-known Seven Summits project. In 1993, Sandy participated in a guided expedition, taking the South Col and Southeast Ridge route. She showed up at the base camp with her nine-year-old son Belle and the nanny, causing a small commotion.However, she encountered many difficulties and turned back after only climbing to a height of 7315 meters. In 1994, she raised more than 250,000 US dollars from enterprises, with the help of the four famous North American mountaineers, Bridgers (who signed a contract to make expedition films for NBC TV), Steven Swenson, Bruce The talents of Barry Blanchard and Alex Lowe return to Everest.Lowe, one of the most outstanding all-round mountaineers in the world, was hired as Sandy's personal guide for a very high salary.The four of them played the vanguard for her and put the rope up the east face all the way, which is the extremely difficult and dangerous mountain face on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest.With the great help of Luo Wei, Sandy climbed the fixed rope to the altitude of 6,705 meters, but was forced to give up again and did not reach the summit.The problem this time was that the snow cover was unstable and dangerous, which forced the whole team to give up climbing. I've heard of Sandy for years, but I didn't meet her for the first time in Gaole Snow Village until I was hiking to base camp.In 1992, "Men" magazine sent me to ride a Harley motorcycle from New York to San Francisco, and then write a report. The famous billionaire publisher of "Rolling Stone", "Men" and "Us" magazine Wiener ( John Wenner and several of his wealthy friends, including Sandy's brother, Rocky Hill, and her husband, Bob Pittman, the co-founder of MTV. The big chrome motorcycle that Weiner borrowed from me was deafening and exciting to ride, and the fellows who spent money like water were also quite friendly.But I have little in common with them, and I don't forget that I was hired by Wiener to have the opportunity to go with them.Over dinner, Pittman, Wiener, and Hill compared the various aircraft they owned (Wiener recommended that the next time I buy a personal jet, I should buy a Gulfstream W), discussed their country estates, and talked about To Sandy, who was climbing Mount McKinley.Bob heard that I also climbed mountains, so he suggested: Hey, you and Sandy should go climbing a mountain together.And now, four years later, we're climbing together. Sandy is 178 centimeters tall, standing five centimeters taller than me.Even here at an elevation of 5,181 meters, her short, boyish hair looks expertly done.Ebullient and straightforward, she grew up in Northern California, camping, hiking, skiing, and more with her father.She loves the freedom and fun of the mountains, and continued to dabble in the outdoors during college and after graduation.In the middle of 1970, her first marriage failed, and she moved to New York due to pain, and the frequency of going to the mountains dropped sharply. She worked as a buyer for high-end department stores in Manhattan, a boutique editor at Ladies magazine, and a beauty editor at Bride magazine before marrying Pittman in 1979.A relentless pursuit of the public's attention, Sandy strives to have her name and photo regularly featured on social media in New York.She is on good terms with the real estate tycoon's wife Britney Spears, the famous NBC anchor Brokaw and his wife Meredith, the fashion designer Mizrahi, and the media celebrity Martha.The couple own a gorgeous estate in Connecticut and an art-filled apartment on Central Park West in New York, complete with uniformed servants.In order to travel between the two places more conveniently, the two bought a helicopter and learned to drive it.In 1990, the Pittmans appeared on the cover of "New York" magazine and were called the couple who counted every second. Soon Sandy determined to become the first American woman to conquer the seven summits of the world, and spent a lot of money to publicize this plan.It is a pity that the last Mount Everest could not be conquered for a long time. In March 1994, the 47-year-old Arras midwife Dolly Lefever completed this goal first, and Sandy lost the opportunity.But she is still reluctant to give up Mount Everest. Withers said one night at base camp: Sandy doesn't climb mountains the way you and I do.In 1993, he participated in a guided expedition to Mount Vinson in Antarctica. At that time, she was climbing the same mountain with another team. It is full of delicious food, and it takes about four people to lift it.She also brought a portable TV and a VCR to watch movies in the tent.Hey, I mean, you have to bow down, few people climb mountains with such style.He described Sandy's generosity in sharing what she brought with other mountain friends, and that it was fun and fun to be around. On the 1996 expedition to Mount Everest, Sandy was once again equipped with paraphernalia not commonly found in mountaineer tents.The day before she left for Nepal, she posted the first article of the trip on NBC Interactive Network, gushing: All my belongings are packed. It seems that the computers and electronic equipment I will bring are no less than mountaineering equipment. Two IBM laptops, a video recorder, three 35mm cameras, a Kodak digital camera, Two tape recorders, a CD game console, a printer, plus enough (I hope) solar panels and batteries for all the power traveling without enough Tin DeLuca blends and espresso machines , I just can't imagine. Since we'll be spending Easter on Everest, I bought four paper-wrapped chocolate eggs.Playing an Easter egg hunt at an altitude of 5,486 meters?Please wait and see! That evening, Norwich, a social columnist, hosted a farewell dinner for Sandy at Nair's in midtown Manhattan.The guest list included socialite Bianca and designer Calvin Klein.Sandy loves costumes, and she wears a high-altitude mountaineering suit over her evening gown, showing up with hiking boots, crampons, an ice ax and a carbine belt. When Shanti arrived in the Himalayas, she seemed to cling to her high-society habits as much as possible.On the way to the base camp, a little Sherpa named Pamba rolls her sleeping bag and packs her backpack every morning.She arrived at the foot of Mount Everest with Fisher's other team members in early April, and her luggage included stacks of newspaper clippings related to herself, which she was going to distribute to other residents of the base camp.Two days later, the Sherpa runner began to regularly deliver packages delivered to her by DHL Global Express to the base camp, including the new issues of "Fashion", "Flickering World", "People", and "Attraction" magazines.The Sherpas are obsessed with lingerie ads and find the scent bars in perfume ads ridiculous. Fisher's team members are congenial and very united.Sandy's idiosyncrasies were taken lightly by most of her teammates, and she seemed to have no trouble accepting her.Jane recalled that getting along with Sandy was very tiring. She needed to be the center of attention and was always talking about herself.But she never gets depressed.She does not bring down the mood of the group.She is full of energy and spirit almost every day. But outside of her team, several mountaineering masters regard her as a layman who is grandstanding.After her failed attempt to climb Everest's East Face in 1994, a TV ad for Vaseline Serum (the expedition's main sponsor) was ridiculed by well-informed mountaineers for describing her as the world's Class mountaineer.But she herself never said so publicly, and indeed, she emphasized in her article for Men that she wanted Bridgers, Lowe, Svensson and Blanchard to know that I just loved climbing and didn't dare to use my amateur abilities Mix it up with their world-class skills. Her illustrious teammate in 1994 had little to say about her, at least not publicly.In fact, after that expedition, Bridgers became a close friend of hers, and Svenson has repeatedly defended her against outside criticism.Look, Sandy may not be a great climber, but on the East Face she admits her limitations, Svenson explained to me at a Seattle social gathering shortly after the expedition returned from Everest.Yes, the four of us did all the lead climbing, all the fixed ropes, but she had a positive attitude, fundraising, dealing with the media, and she had her share. However, there are also many people who slander her.Many people resented her flaunting her wealth and brazenly chasing the public eye.Joanne Kaufmen wrote in The Wall Street Report: In certain upper-class circles, Mrs. Pittman was known more for climbing society than mountains.She and Mr. Pittman were regulars at solemn galas and charities, and the mainstays of gossip columns.A former business partner of Mr. Pittman's, who insisted on anonymity, said Mrs. Pittman had wrinkled the backs of many of his coats.She is very interested in fame.If she had to climb a mountain anonymously, I don't think she would ever do it. Bass popularized the world's seven summits, followed by the demoralization of the world's tallest Everest, and in the minds of critics, Sandy epitomizes everything that is debatable, whether it's fair or not.Yet she was insulated by money, hired entourage, and unwavering narcissism, as indifferent to the resentment and contempt she aroused, like Jane.Like Emma in Austin's novels, she is indifferent to everything.