Summary: this trek is the first part of 3,5 month trekking in 2004 along all the BC's of the 14 8000m plus peaks of the Himalayas and Karakoram. The photo's were made with Canon's EOS 10D en 1D.
BASE CAMP of Nanga Parbat North was visited on july 18th with Anneke, Wim and Evert, after 2 days walking from Tato, a village 15 km from the Karakoram Highway. We met here Jochen Hemmleb, author of "Ghosts of Everest". Later we followed the Baltorogletsjer from Padju (after 3 days walking from Scardu), via the
BASE CAMP of K2 (2004 was a recordyear for summitters: 40 men reached the top of K2, including 5 Balti porters, see photo of the celebration of 3 of them in K2 Hotel!!) and
BASE CAMP of Broad Peak (we met Rob de Kort and Menno Boermans, both not succesfull) and the
BASE CAMPS of Gasherbrum 1 and 2 (Katja Staartjes and Henk Wesselius, both summitted G1 several days before were still euphoric, see photo); the 2 G1 and G2 were not visible from the BC because of heavy fog; only the picture from Concordia of the G(asherbrum) IV gave a tiny glance on the G1 and/or G2.For the return to Skardu we crossed the Gondogoro La (5600m) in a snowstorm. We arrived after the roundtrip in Scardu on aug 7th.
We made this trip and other high altitude treks and climbs (Mera Peak, 6450m in Nepal and Peak Lenin, Kirgistan,7130m) with support of Snow Leopard Adventures: www.snowleopard.nl
The other 9 BC's in Tibet and Nepal are scheduled in oct-november 2004. Edited:aug 20th 2004