Ed Viesturs' Quest for the 8,000 meter peaks

Viesturs

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We basically spent the last 24 hours going through our gear and equipment that we left behind, repacking our loads, meeting with our agency, finalizing any last details. We do plan to do our ministry meeting tomorrow, the briefing, and then if everything goes well on Friday, we should be on a bus heading towards the end of the road to begin our journey to Annapurna.

So we're pretty excited, everything is going very smoothly. We're really looking forward to this. No major glitches at this point, everything is going great. What else? Not much to report right now. Again, we're just biding our time, buying a few last-minute items here in Kathmandu, meeting with other climbers that are off to the mountains. We've understood that there's 28 or so expeditions on the south side of Everest and, as we know, only two other teams on Annapurna. A few days ago, a Spanish expedition left for the Annapurna that we're going to climb, so they'll be a few days ahead of us. And in about a week or so from now there will be a French team which will also be coming to climb Annapurna.

So we'll have a little bit of company, but that's fine with us; it won't be a huge crowd of people. We're just excited to start moving up the hill as soon as we can. So I'll be reporting again tomorrow or the day after. So thanks for checking in, Ed Viesturs signing out.

— Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent


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