As the first summit team heads for Camp 3, the second summit team waits in anticipation at ABC for its departure to push for the top. After two days stormed in at Camp 1, the first team made its way to Camp 2, ascending in snow and strong winds, where they spent another two days trying to avoid the hurricane winds and mind-numbingly cold temperatures reaching -40°F.

The weather high on the mountain, from the ABC view, seems to have taken a turn for the better, with the high winds having seemed to drop to a manageable strength for the climbers to combat en route to the summit. We can only wait for the next radio dispatch to find out who's ascending and who's descending, thanks to the theft of two of our tents, one from Camp 2 and another from Camp 3, leaving us minus four tent spaces.

The scene at ABC is now quiet compared to the international cluster of climbers that was here a week ago. Although the climbers and their Sherpas are gone, the amount of garbage that has been left behind will be here for many years to come. Our expedition and the International Mountain Guide (IMG) expedition — both from the United States — opted to place ABC further down the moraine to relieve the stress on the water supply, sanitation and garbage disposal. The IMG expedition left no trace of their presence after their departure.

We were criticized by some other expeditions for placing our own fixed line on the icefall due to the number of members that we had in our team, but a funny thing happened. Once the excellent Sterling Rope static line was in place, every other team switched from either the cheap Korean-made garden twine that was knotted every three feet, or the dynamic line that stretched more than New York real estate prices.

Another dig at our team was for the use of wands. Why does it seem that only American climbers have the common sense to wand a route, even such a popular route as Cho Oyu with as many as 30 teams on it at one time? There were many different international teams happy with the placement of our wands when their summit attempts became struggling descents in whiteout conditions.

Hopefully we can report tomorrow on a successful summit attempt from team one.

— Phil Crampton, MountainZone.com Correspondent