BBC: Everest Olympic torch diary

[PaPaPeng]

Everest Olympic torch diary
After the Olympic torch's tour around the world, and ahead of its
arrival in Beijing for the Games in August, the BBC's Jonah Fisher
joins it for the high point of its trip - up Mount Everest.

8 May 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7390405.stm

In the eighth of his diary instalments, he watches the final ascent at
last.

See the torch reach the summit of Everest

After 10 days of gazing at Mount Everest and the clouds blowing around
its peak, Thursday 8 May was the day we'd all been waiting for.

The stars were still bright in the sky as I stumbled out of bed at six
in the morning and onto the bus. This was only the second time we'd
been allowed into base camp since we arrived at Everest.

After an initial commotion while someone looked for the remote
control, we sat down in a big green tent in front of a huge television
screen.

Over the next few hours we watched live pictures beamed back from the
mountain as the Chinese mountaineering team worked its way from their
final camp at 8300 metres towards the summit.

We took it in turns to marvel first at the strength of the climbers
and then rather geekily the technical audacity of Chinese television.
They'd put in place eight relay stations on the mountain and were
feeding back incredible images of the torchbearers staggering the
final steps up to the summit.

EVEREST TORCH DIARY

7 May: The final countdown
5 May: Watching the weather
1 May: Base camp tour
29 April: At the foot of Everest
28 April: Whisked through Tibet
26 April: Bypassing Lhasa
24 April: Information blackout

Packed into our tent the combination of patriotic local journalists
and Olympic officials were working themselves into a frenzy. Football
chants were aired as was a big Chinese flag.

At the top of Everest the lanterns were used to light an Olympic
torch. A mini relay was carried out with two female Tibetan climbers
the first and last to hold the torch.

Sitting in a packed tent watching a big screen television, it was a
strange way for a story that I'd been working on for so long to come
to a climax.

A couple of times as they climbed on screen I had to step outside and
look at the mountain to remind myself that this drama was really
taking place just a few kilometres away.

With a successful climb in their back pocket, more Chinese officials
were willing to speak to us than usual.

Li Zhixin, the head of operations, was of particular interest on the
question of why we'd been given so little information throughout our
stay.

"We apologise to the local and international media, we didn't have any
choice because of the outside interference," he said.

"We met with some very great pressures, I can tell you there are
people still out there trying to interfere with the event. Our
climbing torchbearers found their tracks and saw their lights up there
on our routes."

It was the first we'd heard of anyone even getting close to the
Everest climb and impossible to verify.

[aozo...@aol.com]

About as exciting as watching ice melt!