Tuesday, April 11, 2000
Hi, this is Ed Viesturs reporting on the Mountain Zone. It's the evening of April 11th. We're still at Base Camp. We got up this morning with plans to move up to Camp I but the weather was a little bit odd. The winds were out of a different direction, there was clouds early this morning, it was cold and windy and blowing up higher on the mountain. And we felt a little bit ambivalent about the conditions and also feeling that we've been on the move for nine straight days, decided to take a rest day here at Base Camp, and also to see what the weather was going to be doing since there was a pattern that we hadn't yet seen. So we had a good rest day here at Base Camp, relaxing. We set up a shower tent and we basically just took it easy and had a good day, hanging out and really just doing nothing here at Base Camp other than reading and relaxing. The weather held; the clouds dissipated early in the afternoon and nothing really major developed. So our plan is to go up to Camp I tomorrow, on the 12th and spend a couple of nights there and push the route further in hopes of establishing a Camp II and maybe snooping around somewhere towards the direction of the Dutch Rib and Camp III. So that'll be a four or five day project before we get back down to Base Camp. We may have a system worked out that we can relay messages down to Base Camp. We don't have plans to carry the MINI M up to Camp I that would be too much for us but there may be a way for us to relay messages from Camp I down to Base Camp and if not it'll be several days before I get a message back from Base Camp. So for now that's the update and we'll either be sending a message down from Camp I or again, it'll be four or five days before I call again personally to make a report. So everything's going well, we're looking forward to going up to Camp I and spending a few days higher on the mountain and scoping the route up further toward the north side of the mountain. So that's it for now, Ed Viesturs signing out from the north side of Annapurna.
Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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