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13 APR 2001
 Audio Dispatch
Viesturs
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Hello everyone, greetings from Tibet. It's Ed Viesturs calling. It's about 6 p.m. and we're now at Advanced Base Camp (18,300 ft roughly, 5600 meters).
We got here about an hour and half ago and it took us approximately 5 ½ hours of walking, at the pace of a yak, to get here. It was a pretty nice walk initially leaving Base Camp on rolling grassy plains like a gigantic golf course at about 16,000 feet and then the terrain got a little bit rougher, gravelly, rocky, glacial moraine type terrain. During the last hour and a half or so it started to snow, but we got here in good shape, as well as the yaks and the yak drivers.
During the snow storm we managed to set up a couple of tents. Veikka and I are each in our own Mountain Hardwear Trango Two's and this will be our home away from home for awhile while we are working on the mountain. We get to dig into all of our gear, settle in with books and music, that type of thing, and then we also set up our kitchen/dining tent where Dorje Tamong will be doing our cooking and he's got an assistant, Hung Chu Sherpa, affectionately known as a kitchen boy, who will help him with kitchen duties, washing the dishes, and getting water.
So we're glad to be here. We will hang out until at least through tomorrow. We get to sort our gear, acclimatize, that type of thing. Maybe on Sunday we'll do a carry along the moraine up valley a ways to check out to see what the glacier looks like.
But were gonna take it easy for a day or two and get our bodies used to this altitude. It's quite a nice place. It's very flat. At the end of this trail it is a sandy tongue basically between two glacial moraines and from here the trail kind of winds its way through some rocky terrain as it gets eventually onto the glacier.
Veikka is somewhat above me in the high rent district. I'm a little lower on a terrace in kind of the middle of the road area and down below, in the commercial district, is where Dorje and Hung Chu have setup our kitchen and dining area.
We are the only ones here at this point. It is quite nice. It's very quiet. We look forward to being on the mountain for awhile, just the two of us. But I am sure eventually there will be several other teams arriving in two or three weeks.
So I will give you a call again tomorrow. Fill you in to what we are doing. What type of gear we are planing on taking up the mountain. That type of thing.
So thanks for listening once again. Ed Viesturs signing out from Advanced Base Camp on Shishapangma.
— Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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