We have been in base camp for six days. We've made two strong, yet failed attempts at reaching our planned site for advanced base camp. The first trip, by Don and Bruce, ended at the top of the ice fall, in the center of the Goodwin Austin Glacier, at approx. 18,500 feet. With snow falling, they couldn't see our goal, but felt that the route ahead would be simple.

As you know, the next day, Bruce and I re-traced their steps. One hundred feet short of the previous high point, following a line of marker flags, we were suddenly swallowed by two massive crevasses. It took us an hour to rescue ourselves, and another hour to rescue the gear.

Standing at the edge of those crevasses, the four of us decided that we had to try a completely different tactic. There just isn't much information on the upper section of this glacier. With most teams never venturing beyond the Abruzzi Ridge (where the South Face meets the East Face), the East Face remains largely unknown. We needed to abandon this route, which we learned about from a map based on a 1976 Polish expedition report. It was time to try the approach used by the 1978 American NE Ridge Expedition (and, zapping my enthusiasm, their book chronicled numerous crevasse falls between the Abruzzi and the base of their ridge). The last team to attempt a route beyond the Abruzzi was a British team in 1996, and their reports never mentioned how they reached the face.

The safest path to the base of the Face remains a mystery, made even more complex as the glacier pushes downhill each year. A route that may have been safe even 2 years ago could now be fatal.

PV and I leave base camp in an hour (at 7 a.m.). We now have the route established to the base of the Abruzzi Ridge. We also have a depot of 300 pounds of gear about an hour short of that route's ABC. Today we will set up a temporary camp there and shuttle some loads.

Tomorrow, Bruce and Don will join us. Together we will try to find a safe trail to the base of our route on the East Face. Our weather forecasts indicate a change in the weather starting today. To date the weather patterns have been dominated by daily uplifts, causing snow fall by mid afternoon, and lasting through the night. While the accumulations have been just a few inches daily, most melting away at base camp, this pattern has already proven dangerous on the glacier. Even a few inches of snow, creatively shifted about by the wind, hides crevasses.

We are carrying 5 days worth of food. The forecast is for good weather until the end of the period (Monday). We are hopeful that we can establish ABC in the next few days. We are fueled by the calendar. It is proving far more difficult than anticipated to get the "climbing " started. We had hoped to be at Camp 1 by now.

But then again, this is K2.

Chris Warner