Friday 10:40 am local time (1:40 am EST). Chris and Don radio in. Chris is with Bruce in the lead group with several Russians. They have just turned the corner on the traverse, taking on the task of fixing a series of three ropes on behalf of all the climbers. Fortunately, one of the Russians found an old, existing fixed line and this has helped to speed things up a bit. Don is about 60 meters behind, ascending another rope at the beginning of the traverse. He is with some Italian climbers and a Czech climber arriving from the Cesen Route. The Czech climber has with him an additional 40 meters of rope for fixing. Chris estimates that if all goes well with the rest of the fixing, the summit would be attained in about 4 hours.

Friday July 20, 2007 8:03 am local time (Thursday, 11:03 pm EST). Chris called in on a Russian radio. They are above the bottleneck and on to the traverse -- a swath of 55-degree loose snow over ancient glacial ice. At one point, Chris had the lead on the pitch but a Russian has taken over the lead and Chris and another Russian Climber, Ronan, are working together, on belay, in front of a backlog of other climbers including Joao Garcia, some of the Korean Team, Don, Bruce, and the Italians. They have now been out for almost seven hours.

Additional coverage by our friends at ExplorersWeb.com: [ Click Here ] 

Friday, 6:20 am local time (Thursday, 9:20 pm EST). We have not yet heard from our climbers but at Base Camp we have received visits from the Portuguese, Italians, Koreans and Russians in the last 30 minutes. From what we can piece together, the Americans and Koreans left first this morning. Followed by the Italians around 2 am. The Russians and Portuguese Teams departed Camp 4 around 3 am. Gauging by the speed of the Americans from Camp 4 to the bottleneck, all of the teams are likely within 150 meters of each other at this still early stage.

Friday, 4:23 am local time (Thursday, 7:23 pm EST). Joel in Base Camp just got off the radio with Chris. Chris reports that the Team has reached the Bottleneck (approximatly 8200 meters) and continuing the climb.

As calls come in from BC, they will be posted here. 

Here is a cool addition to your reading... The good folks over at ExploresWeb.com just posted this story:

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Friday, 1:20 am local time (Thursday, 4:20 pm EST). The Shared Summits (a.k.a. American) Team has left for their summit bid. They are joined by, and working in concert with, five other teams. Also making summit bids are the Korean Men's Team, the Korean Women's Team, the Portuguese Team, the Italian Team, and the Russian Team. Each team is supporting the others in this truly international effort. We wish them all luck and a safe return.

An hour later Don had these thoughts on the trip to C4:

Thursday, 2:30 pm

It was a great day, but it was a tough day though - you know K2 has really not given us any easy days.   It's really amazing - once again we had super deep snow, waist deep in places and bottomless in other places...but this time we had the help of a number of different people including members of the Russian and Korean teams, Joao and Amin, and the three of us, so it was much easier slogging up these slopes.  The weather was fantastic, the views spectacular, and we're just excited to be here - we've been staring up at K2 and at the bottleneck with a sense of excitement about going for that summit and a sense of fear because it certainly looks nasty.

Thursday, 6:30 am

Chris calls down from Camp 3 ½ to base camp to check in.  The winds have been blowing very strongly all night at Base Camp and Chris reports they were howling all night above.  Aurellio, a reporter traveling with Joao Garcia (the Portuguese climber also at Camp 3 ½), is kind enough to bring his laptop to our camp to display our weather report (which we had forwarded to him since our computer is still down).  The weather report calls for the same conditions as have been forecasted for the last several days - good weather with low winds (10 mph and less) Thursday morning thru Friday night, increasing winds on Saturday (25-35 mph) and snow, higher winds and stormy weather starting Sunday.  The winds last night were higher than forecasted, so Chris asks if we can see any winds blowing on the shoulder (where the ridge dips above them) - there are none.

Wednesday, 5:30 pm

Chris calls from Camp 3 ½.  From right out of the gate the climbers were forced to break trail in snow over one meter deep, which Chris described as "abysmal."  After 3 hours they had traveled about 300 meters, which put them at an altitude of 7,700 meters.

Wednesday, 1:00 pm

The team has begun climbing and is now 120 meters above C3.  The winds have died down but the snow is deep.  Joao, who left from C2 earlier in the morning, is with them, and the two Sherpas from the Korean women's team are following.  The Russians have stayed at C3.