5月17日
Everest Team INSPI(RED) 19
The time has come to leave the relative comforts of our base camp and head into extreme altitudes. Tomorrow morning at 3:30 we plan to here for our final push through the ice fall and on to CII. On Monday the 19th we will take a rest day there at over 21,000 feet. On the 20th we move to CIII and on the 21st to CIV or the ‘South Col’. We’ll then have two opportunities to try for the summit. The first would come on the night of the 21st putting us on the summit in the early hours of May 22. We will also have enough oxygen to spend over 24 hours on the South Col and make an attempt the night of the 22nd putting us on the summit early on the 23rd. That decision will be based on weather and the condition of the team once we are in place at CIV. Up here even the best laid plans are subject to quick changes and our flexibility will serve us well if conditions on the mountain present differently than expected.
The past week has been a wonderful one for Jeff, Melissa and I. We had the opportunity to drop down more than 5,000 feet from base camp and enjoy the incredible number of rhododendrons blooming. The grass in the meadows in Deboche was beginning to green and all around there was flowing streams. It was a delight. As you could see from the pictures in the last dispatch we truly relaxed. We also were able to visit the Tengboche Monastery, the largest in the Khumbu.
Base camp is beginning to take on the characteristic feel of a summit week. There’s a great deal of excitement and anxiousness coupled with a sense of things starting to wrap up. All of the climbers sense that the end of the quest could be near and it makes for a tense but exciting time. So far the season has been blessed with little in the way of accidents and tragedy. We intend to keep it that way as we ascend into what feels like the heavens and look down across the sweeping Tibetan plateau, the valleys of Nepal and the Indian sub-continent.
We’ll be in touch from above.
DAVID MORTON
Today’s EVEREST TEAM INSPI(RED) expedition dispatch brought to you by Dell and Windows, proud partners of (PRODUCT) RED™.
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