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16 APR 2001
 Audio Dispatch
Viesturs
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Hi, it's Ed Viesters reporting (for Mountainzone). It's Monday evening April 16th, a little after 5pm.
The sun has just gone behind the neighboring ridge and when that happens up here it gets very, very cold. We're quite high here at Advanced Base Camp. So when the sun disappears there is not much going on other than hiding in your sleeping bag, unless it's dinner time.
Veikka and I sorted through a little bit more gear today and some food that we are taking with us. We're gonna be heading up tomorrow, on Tuesday, hoping to establish Camp I, somewhere along the way. We're then going to spend five or six nights on the mountain, working our way up and trying to get as high as possible, perhaps even setting up a second camp somewhere in the neighborhood of 23,000-24,000 feet. That all depends on the weather, the snow conditions, and other things that we can't control.
Right now it's very, very windy up high. We can see lenticular clouds (Altocumulus Lenticularus clouds are rare, lumpy, middle height, wave clouds, very smooth, flying saucer shape, associated with very strong winds and turbulence) blowing off of the summit ridge. They're very beautiful clouds, but they indicate very high winds. Down here it's been windy off and on throughout the day, but it's very typical of this Base Camp that the wind blows through the gully from the south and then comes roaring right through camp. But it's not too bad during the day when the sun is out, but as soon as the sun goes down it becomes very, very cold.
So we have a little bit more gear to take with us tomorrow. We are not taking our sleeping bags. We are just going to take the down quilt that we've been using in the past. We will be sleeping under that, while we are wearing our down suits. We can thereby save some weight, not only in carrying the stuff up, but also later in carrying it all down. We've got six days of food packed up, and in a pinch we can stretch this out. It's hard to say how much you are going to eat up high. Typically you eat a lot less than you think you are going too. So there will probably be a fair amount left over for our second round when we go back up in hopes of reaching the summit. So for this first trip we're just going to try to establish a route, get a couple of camps set up and get acclimatized. Get a feel for the mountain and then five or six days from now we will be back here at Base Camp and I will report once again.
So it will be several days before you here from me again, but I'll call in as soon as we get back down, perhaps sometime next Saturday or Sunday.
Thanks again for checking in once again.
Ed Viesturs signing out.
— Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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