Below are diary entries journaling the team's ascent from C3 to C4. Joel Shalowitz

Wednesday, 7:05 am

9:00 am EST.  Here is a quick update... I just got off the phone with Joel from Base Camp. Not all of the details are in, but it seems that the Team encountered some significant terrain difficulties, deep snow possibly, during their climb from Camp 3 to 4. They have successfully put in a Camp 3 1/2 at about 7700 meters and the three are safe. It is undetermined if they will be going to Camp 4 tomorrow or attempt the summit from this position. Fortunately, the previous weather forecast still has Friday as an acceptable day. Joel is attempting to download an updated weather forecast as I am writing this. A full dispatch from Base Camp will follow later today (hopefully, if the expedition weary laptop is up to it).

Below is a diary of entries journaling today's move from C2 to C3. Special thanks to the Italian Team for facilitating sending this dispatch.

-Joel Shalowitz 

Tuesday, 6:45 am

This morning we awoke to find base camp blanketed with 6" of new snow.  It had snowed all night and it was still coming down.  Chris radioed down saying the inside of the tent was a "rainforest" - the swirling winds and snow had blown inside the space between the outer tarp and the outside of the inner tent , so the evaporating and condensing moisture from the climbers inside the tent was causing "sweat drops" to rain down on them.

11:21 am EST: Chris Warner called today via satellite phone. It seems that Base Camp is having telecom trouble and unable to get an email out. Joel called tech support, but they were unable to dispatch a technician, citing prohibitive travel costs. Good help is hard to find these days.

Below is a diary of entries from the last several days.  We will continue to post such entries, along with recorded radio dispatches from the climbers, as we progress on the march to the summit this week.

Joel Shalowitz

K2 Base Camp is a very international place. The Shared Summits Team took a moment to ask what other Teams on "the strip" thought about the mountain.

[ Play Video ] 

Laying around base camp in perfectly good weather while K2 remains unclimbed leaves me with a slight sense of guilt--kinda like goofing off while at work. So if you are currently at work while reading this dispatch, then you are familiar with what I am trying to articulate here.

Joel Shalowitz's Pakistan Journey For Charity by Judy Oppenheimer, reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times . Originally published July 13, 2007.

After enduring another closed weather window and returning safely to base camp earlier this week, the team's spirits have been buoyed by the news that a summit chance looks very promising early next week.  Once again we will be watching the weather very closely through the weekend to confirm the projections and nail down the specifics.

Blogging from Basecamp. No modern mountaineering kitbag is complete without laptop, camcorder and satellite uplink.

by Bernhard Warner [Chris' brother], formerly Reuters' internet correspondent in Europe and senior editor for The Industry Standard Europe, writes about technology, the internet and media industries. Originally published July 11, 2007.