Day 24. May, 3. The last post in the blog: we are leaving BC

For a few days Internet didn't work, and it was a hindrance in describing camp life during these days. Only today in the morning before our leave Internet was 'turned on'.

There was 'Abramov party' yesterday - Sasha invited all mountaineers, who weren't evacuated, to our camp for a party. I don't post a picture: on the one hand - the party was on the highest level; on the other hand - all invitees reminded me about the waiting room in spaceport from the movie 'Men in black' or movies like that. In general: very and very unusual ladies and gentlemen want to climb Everest.

At the time of the party it started snowing hard, the strong wind blew, as a result everybody were drunk and danced a lot. It was cool! And in the morning we saw the snow-covered Base Camp - the nature made a present for us before we left. 

Today early in the morning Tolya Menskiy started to wield in the kitchen - cooking for the farewell breakfast his specialty of the house - 'krepyzh' potato pancakes with carrots (carrots separately). It turned out to be very delicious. And our cook Dandy for two hours, during which they were cooking at the kitchen, had learned how to pronounce the name of this meal correctly ('draniki').

At last with a great pleasure I took a photo with kitchenboys. They are married Tibetans, they wear black braids with a massive white plastic ring in place of an elastic band, they wear blue or orange or both colors earings. Against my will I remember the words of Leslie White: 'If all the men in our society wear long hair or blacken their teeth (read - wear earings of a certain kind) then you - a man and an adult member of society should do the same'.

Since everything he read about this area had been written by mountaineers, for whom it was considered good form to play down difficulties, he got to a difficult situation.
Reinhold Messner

Messner wrote these lines about Maurice Wilson, who also wanted to climb Everest on Rongbuk glacier. I, Sergey Bogomolov, '7 summits' club team, Valdis Pelsh's film crew and also organisers of other 13 expeditions from the Tibet side got to a difficult situation: CTMA (China Tibet Mountaineering Association) had closed Everest and other Tibet mountains for the whole season of 2015.

In the past it happened only once - in 2008 during Olympics in Beijing - but that was a planned closing; urgently China closes the mountains for the first time. So we all faced a sudden insuperable difficulty. Well, that's fine, pack your stuff and go home.

According to the latest information the number of earthquake victims in Nepal is more than 7 thousand people; our partners in Nepal think that the government understates the number three times,  so the real number of victims is about 20 000 - a tremendous number. Earthquake shocks of different power still happen, in these conditions it is possible to say in Abramov's words: 'Do you want to the mountain or to stay alive?' 

Thanks God - everyone is alive; and what concerns the mount - we'll cope with this misfortune. How our dear Ivan Dusharin says: 'having enough time and a good guide - is 80% of success'; we had it all plus preparation and acclimatization, but as ill luck would have it - force-majeur happened. I agree with Ivan, but 80% is not 100%. We did the utmost, we didn't get any results and in this situation all we are left for is to make sense of one single fact - how wonderful it is, that we are alive!  

On that minor-major note I consider this blog to be completed.