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Dr. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod Diary Entry Friday, 20 June 1902
Camp X.
Time seems to stand still on this June 20, 1902. The east wind freshens up when I arrive at the base camp, then becomes a storm, and there is nothing left but the discomfort of leaking tents, the interrupted nights on damp mattresses, the protracted days, the frozen feet, the nose leaning towards a chessboard, the wind whistling around the tents or the gigantic avalanches thundering without appetite to eat badly warmed canned food. The 1902 expedition is Closed Doors, oppressive and dark, too dark to be photographed. I compare this situation to that of Nansen’s in the ice of the North Pole.
Strangely enough, no one seems to account for the fact that this general slowdown of body and mind coincides with the arrival at altitude: the base camp is at 5700 meters, too high not to disrupt the organisms during a longer stay. However, the expedition should support the effects of life at altitude. I carefully note the saturation of the blood with hemoglobin and describe the symptoms, which for a contemporary Alpine mountaineer are clear characteristics of mountain sickness: Migraine, nausea, cough, insomnia, lack of appetite . . . But he hurries to call these, influenza, flu, indigestion, as if to convince himself that they have nothing to do with altitude.
The expedition spends almost two months at over 5700 meters and exhausts itself. By the way, it is striking to see how it is enough for me to descend a few hundred meters in order to rediscover my clear mind and I understand that it is absurd to climb to more than 6000 meters, in order to get the anemia by moving away from the most direct route to the summit. But let's watch the film in fast motion. During the first ten days in the base camp, hardly anyone moves, only Pfannl [Heinrich Pfannl] and Wessely [Victor Wessely] do ski explorations. Afterwards the movements are like flea jumps.
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