Providing medical care at 17,500 feet above sea level

As director and founder of the world's highest medical clinic, Dr. Luanne Freer has her work cut out for her working at Everest Base Camp.

It was just this past week that Freer's efforts were chronicled in Outside Magazine's on-line presence, check it out its a great interview,
http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/200905/luanne-freer-everest-er.html

Everest is maxed?

April and May has been the busiest on record for Mount Everest. With over 1200 people at Everest Base Camp, you have to wonder if its reaching its max.

While in Canmore Alberta two weeks ago, I stopped in to visit my buddy four time Everest Summiter Wally Berg who owns Berg Adventures International. With an upcoming Everest summit expedition on the books for April of 2010, I asked if we was concerned about the volumes of people.

His response was yes, as when you get that many people on the mountain, there are the inevitable bottle necks at places like Hillary's step. And at 27,000 feet its not somewhere you want to be hanging out.

This is all pretty facinating for an armchair mountaineer like me. This climbing season- happening between April and May- I have been addicited to sites like http://blog.firstascent.com/ which is pretty killer, providing daily HD video blogs along their ascent.

Anouther great one is http://www.alanarnette.com/alan/everest2009.php who provides a daily progress report on the teams as they make their strike for the summit