 Ed Viesturs' Quest for the 8,000 meter peaks |
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Monday, April 10, 2000
 Viesturs | |
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Hi this is Ed Viesturs on the evening of April 10th from Annapurna Base Camp. We had a pretty good day today. We managed to establish Camp I at 16,500 feet, roughly. We left here early this morning at about 6:30 in the morning and retraced our steps as of yesterday, and then climbed higher on the rocky slab and ledges and gullies which carried us up and to the left of the main icefall of the Annapurna glacier. So we completely avoided going in through the icefall by climbing the rocky slabs and ledges up to Camp I. We did some fixing of rope along the way. There were some old pitons left in place from previous expeditions, but no sign of rope or any other indication of previous climbers.
So, we have quite a bit of gear up at Camp I. We have another pile at the base of the rocky slab which we'll pick up tomorrow. Our plan is to go — once again, tomorrow — picking up the remaining of our gear along the way, carrying it to Camp I, we have enough food and fuel, tents and supplies then to stay at Camp I and start working our way toward Camp II on the glacier above.
Camp I is situated on a rocky prow. It's on solid ground right at the edge of the glacier, so it's a great spot to hang out. It's not too high, 16,500 feet. So we plan to go up and if the weather holds and we're still strong and healthy, we'll stay up there for several days, establishing our way toward Camp II and possibly pushing a little bit higher.
So that's the plan for now, we'll see what the weather is doing in the morning. We just had an afternoon snow flurry, which is quite common, but the weather is starting to clear again this evening, so it looks good for tomorrow. As long as the weather is good, we feel that we're just going to keep on going and take a rest day when the weather starts to deteriorate a little bit.
So that's it for now. If anything changes before we leave in the morning I'll report once again. Otherwise it will be several days before I report back from our stay up at Camp I. Ed Viesturs signing out from Annapurna Base Camp on the Mountain Zone.
— Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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