God-forsaken, but not without soul or success stories - Grania Willis takes in the atmosphere at Everest base camp
Everest base camp is, without doubt, the most god-forsaken spot in the world, even though it nestles at the bottom of the tallest, most daunting and staggeringly beautiful mountain in the world.
As you get out of your tent in the morning, the views from base camp - the western shoulder of Everest, the terrifying Khumbu ice-fall, the Lhotse face - are totally breathtaking, but breath is something that isn't too freely available in the thin air at 17,600 feet. Even getting in and out of your sleeping bag is breathtaking, and clambering over the constantly shifting undulations of a giant quarry perched atop a constantly shifting, 200-foot thick layer of solid ice gives a new meaning to hyperventilation.
There are no tracks or paths. Getting about means scrambling over or around enormous boulders, teetering from rock to rock or skidding on a sheet of ice masquerading as a covering of gravel. There are Nepalese prayer flags fluttering everywhere, the blue, white, red, green and yellow squares representing the elements. And, if your religion or superstition dictates, you have to pass all prayer rocks on the left, meaning endless detours en route to your destination.
Tents are pitched precariously on any slightly flat area in the sprawl that is Everest base camp. From a distance, the tiny coloured tents look for all the world like a giant rubbish-tip. But the climbers and their back-up teams, particularly the wonderfully loyal sherpas, ensure that the litter of urban myth remains precisely that, mythical.
But a cyber-café at base camp - that must surely be in the realms of myth? Well no, an Internet café - a tent with laptops and satellite phones - was set up at base camp this season. It has made communications much easier, but the temperamental generator often brings about a premature end to the joys of surfing.
Base camp is big business, particularly in this the Golden Jubilee year commemorating Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay's successful climbing of Everest in 1953. No fewer than 29 teams have been camped out in the vast expanse of rocky rubble this season and only a determination to climb to the top of the mountain would induce anyone to spend months in such a place.
Yet base camp itself isn't without soul. Everyone you meet has a story. Take Peggy, from the Canadian team, who had to abandon her summit attempt en route to Camp Four when claustrophobia meant she kept dragging the oxygen mask from her face. She argued that she could manage without it until she reached Camp Four, but the climbing sherpa with her wouldn't allow her go on and she had to return, devastatingly disappointed, to base camp. But at least one good thing came out of it - she had proposed to her boyfriend before she left for Nepal and was flying home to a new life as a married woman.
And then there was the magical Sherpa Lhakpa Gelu, who left base camp at six o'clock last Tuesday evening, bidding to smash the speed record for climbing Everest, set in 2000 by Sherpa Babu Chiri. Lhakpa Gelu was hoping to reach the dizzying heights of the summit by 6 a.m. the following day, slashing almost four hours off Babu Chiri's record of 16 hours and 56 minutes.
But Lhakpa Gelu, like everyone else, was turned back by the weather, and Babu Chiri, who died while going for his 11th summit in 2001, still features in the record books as the climber to reach the summit in the fastest time, as well as the one who has stayed there longest - an incredible 21 hours - without oxygen.
Oxygen is a rare commodity at base camp, but it's even more rarefied up the mountain and the Irish camp includes a sobering message amongst the graffiti on the tent walls left by earlier climbers: "Never, ever forget, you are not from Planet Sherpa."
For a long time it looked as though the 50th anniversary of Hillary and Tenzing's historic climb would be commemorated as the year in which no-one reached the summit, just as had happened in 1985. The medical teams at the Himalayan Rescue Association clinics at base camp and Pheriche Hospital were watching the weather nervously and wondering if the mountain would win out this year.
But finally, last Thursday morning, Mick Murphy and Ger McDonnell joined Dawson Stelfox and Pat Falvey on the list of Everest's conquerors and base camp burst back into life as the tension that had been building since March 15th (when the team left Ireland) finally spilled over into jubilation and celebration.