At 9:30 am this morning, as he left Camp 2, Chris was jubilant.  As he reported the team having finally reached Camp 3 at 7:00 pm, after what was supposed to be a 5 hour trip, he rasped, "Today the mountain kicked my ass."

When we spoke to Chris this morning his first words were "Hey I guess you guys can see the amazing day - much better than yesterday...we have no winds, full sun...it's warm...we're just gonna start taking down the tent at Camp 2 and move it up to 3, over."

At that point, Don had been gone most likely for an hour leading ahead of the group to break trail in the waist high snow.  From their vantage point at Camp 2, and in fact, from our vantage point looking up from base camp, the entire valley below the mountain was clear and warming.  The only exception was the cloud that insisted on lingering just above Camp 2 on the Abruzzi route, blanketing the way toward C3.  At the time, it appeared it would burn off with the others, but as the morning progressed it became clear that this would not be the case.

About four hours later, we got the first indications that this would be a long day.  Chris called in to announce the continued heavy winds, declaring "it's impossible to tell where we are inside this Black Pyramid ...visibility above us is only 150 feet."  With me in the communications tent on the radio and Chris Stensland outside spying the section above C2 with binoculars, we mentioned that we were watching the storm cloud that they were obviously smothered in, to which Warner replied, "Hey, where does the cloud stop? Over." To which Stensland forwarded, "Tell him just above the shoulder." (The shoulder is the ridge section near C4).   Warner replied, "Ok, we'll just keep plodding along...little on the chilly side... out."

As the afternoon wore on, the news didn't get any better.  At around 2 pm, Stensland spotted a group of 6 Koreans leaving upward from C2, only to learn an hour later that the Koreans, experiencing extreme cold thru their down mittens, decided to retreat back to Camp 2.  As 3pm turned to 4pm and still later with the dropping sun casting the mountain's chilling shadow over base camp, we decided to radio the climbers to ask how they were doing.  Chris' response: "Desperate." He then asked, "What time is it?" We responded, "Ten after five". 

Apparently during that time, if the conditions weren't enough, with Don leading, and Bruce trying to catch him up to take over the lead for a while (he finally did about three quarters of the trip at around 7,000 meters) the team fixed an additional 200 meters of rope to steady the rest of the way.  An hour later, Chris reported, "We now have a rope the whole way, but it's a nasty ass day, over." Then adding, "...fortunately the winds died down about two hours ago making things bearable; otherwise we'd have a hypothermic mess."  Finally, another hour or so later, and over 10 hours after they started, we heard from Bruce that the team was finally and safely in the tent at Camp 3: altitude 7,450 meters.

So how was your July 4th? 

Joel Shalowitz