Ed Viesturs' Quest for the 8,000 meter peaks

Viesturs

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So our plan for now is to go back up to Camp I tomorrow morning. We'll be leaving Base Camp here at about 7 or 7:30 in the morning, climbing back to Camp I, and if the day and the weather permit we'll continue on to look for a possible route to establish our new Camp II. After spending tomorrow night at Camp I, if all goes according to plan, we'll be able to climb higher and over the course of the next three or four or five days, establish a new Camp II on our new route, hopefully at around 19,000 feet. And also our plan is then to establish a third camp at approximately 22-23,000 feet during this next foray up the mountain.

So we plan to be up on the hill for another four to five to six nights. If all goes well, if the conditions are good, if the route is feasible, we'll have that all behind us, we'll come back down to Base Camp, we'll rest and relax and make one final push after that and try to get to the summit. So this next several days is going to be the key I think to this climb for us — whether or not this route that we're looking at is feasible and if so the next several days will be very critical as far as the success of this expedition.

So we're very excited about it, it's a new part of the mountain for us. We'll get different views, different challenges; a place that we don't know where other people have gone yet and so we're excited to take a look at this new route that we're checking out — very minor objective hazard, we feel more comfortable with this, more relaxed and a lot more excited than we had been in the previous week, knowing what we were up against on the normal route.

So that's it for now. My friend Jake from the Spanish team will relaying messages over the next several days as I call down from the mountain via radio. So keep in tune and we'll hope for the best. Thanks for tuning in. Ed Viesturs signing out from Annapurna Base Camp.

— Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent


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