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Raphael SlawinskiChris Noble/The Globe and Mail

After the earthquake rattled Mount Everest's base camp in Tibet, the fear of flooding and aftershocks descended on the climbers living at 5,200 metres above sea level.

Saturday's 7.8-magnitude earthquake spilled rubble from steep mountainsides and sent expeditionists running from the mess tent where they had just eaten lunch.

"It felt like being on the deck of a ship," Raphael Slawinski, a Canadian alpinist who had planned to forge the first new route to the top in more than a decade, said in a satellite-phone interview from northside base camp.

Once the earth stopped shaking and it became clear all were safe, the climbers almost immediately fretted a peril of a different sort: Might a lake on the moraines above burst from its rocky banks and wash over their camp? Like sitting ducks, the adventurers prepared for the worst, changing into heavy-duty boots and loading critical items into packs.

Fortunately, the waters never came, the aftershocks subsided and the northside climbers who set out for higher-elevation base camps before the quake, including Canada's Nancy Hansen, have confirmed they are okay or are believed to have descended.

Among the many questions now is whether it is safe or even permitted to forge ahead – and, more existentially, whether it is respectful of the dead to pursue the thrill of a summit amid such tragedy.

In a blog post written Sunday from base camp, Mr. Slawinski noted that most of the kitchen staff there had families in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital where thousands have perished. The Sherpa guides' children had gone to school there, too.

"The bigger picture is that the news coming out of Kathmandu is horrific," Mr. Slawinski, a Calgary physics professor who was making his maiden attempt at Everest, said in the patchy call to Canada on Tuesday morning, local time.

He is also aware of the horror on the other side of the mountain. Climbers hoping to set out from the more popular southside base camp in Nepal were hit by a powerful avalanche that levelled the tent city, killed at least 18 climbers, injured dozens and left untold others missing in the historic melee.

"Base camp on the southside has all these glaciers around it, whereas we are in a dry area that's basically a rocky hillside," said Mr. Slawinski, who has been climbing half of his 48 years. "We were really in a very, very good spot."

Before the earthquake, he and his two German teammates had split their time between nearby ridges and basecamp in order to gradually acclimatize to the altitude. Their original schedule had them leaving for advanced base camp, at 6,500 metres, on Tuesday, but those plans are now on hold – or, perhaps, quashed altogether.

A representative from the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, which regulates climbing activities, reached base camp by Jeep to discuss the future of this year's expedition season, Mr. Slawinski said. His understanding is that the association is leaning toward cancelling the season. He had already heard rumours of a team at advanced base camp that wanted to proceed but ultimately descended under threat that if they did not, the association would never allow them to come back.

"I would like to be able to make our own decision," Mr. Slawinski said. "The most compelling [argument] against continuing, to me, would be almost out of respect to all the victims and whether it's [acceptable] to be going ahead and having fun given what has happened. On the other hand, I have invested a lot of personal time and effort into this trip and it's hard to let go of it."

If he does not continue, he is not entirely sure how his journey back to Canada would unfold. Getting to Kathmandu and flying out from there "seems out of the question," he said, so perhaps he will have to get to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, and depart from there.

Mr. Slawinski said he had not always had his sights set on the world's highest mountain, but was intrigued at the prospect of climbing an uncharted route to the peak. "I tend to look for adventure and solitude," he said.

He has had eventful expeditions before: He was in Pakistan in 2013, making his way up the Karakoram Highway when he heard gunmen had killed 11 people at the Nanga Parbat base camp.

"This situation is different, but it's similar in the sense that something happened that you didn't expect," he said. "You try to be as safe as possible, but there's just so much that's out of your control because mountains are just such big, dynamic places."

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