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11 APR 2001
 Audio Dispatch
Viesturs
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Hi, It's Ed Viesturs reporting on MountainZone.com. It's Wednesday, the 11th of April, at about 2:30 in the afternoon Nepal time, which makes it about 1:15am west coast time.
Right now we're sitting at the end of the road or what the Chinese term Base Camp, at about 16,400 feet. We arrived here at about 11:30 this morning after driving about 3 ½ hours from Nyalam. It's a nice spot. It's very flat, very open grassy plateau, surrounded to the west and the south by gigantic snowy Himalayan peaks and the centerpiece is Shishapangma, almost directly to the south of us.
It's a beautiful day, starting to cloud up now just slightly higher up on the mountaintops. Other than that it's a pleasant afternoon here at Base Camp. Our liaison officer has set up his home. This is where he'll hang out for the duration of the climb.
We'll spend the rest of the day here today, and then also the whole day tomorrow here, and then on the following day, Friday, with our yaks, myself, and Veikka, and Dorje Tamong and the cook boy, we'll do a full days walk up to Advanced Base Camp, which is going to be at about 18,300 feet. It's kind of a long days walk, but it's very gradual and that's where we will set up Advanced Base, or for us, literally, it's going to be our Base Camp because we won't go any lower than that for the duration of the climb.
So for now we're just hanging out. Tomorrow we'll sort through some of our gear, make sure all the loads are about 25 kilograms, for the yaks. Then on the following day, on Friday, we'll head up a little bit further and establish our Base Camp.
That's it for now. I'll call again tomorrow, let you know how the day progressed and how things are going. Up till now everything's going fine. Weather is fairly stable, no major storms. As long as it stays like this I think we'll be fine and we can keep moving up the hill quite efficiently.
Thanks for checking in. Ed Viesturs signing out for MountainZone.com.
— Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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