 Ed Viesturs' Quest for the 8,000 meter peaks |
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Friday, April 21, 2000
 Viesturs | |
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Hi this is Ed Viesturs, reporting on the Mountain Zone. It's the evening of April 21st, and myself and the entire team are here back at Base Camp. We spent our second night at Camp II yesterday and the day before we made an exploratory foray up towards what we were hoping to perhaps be a new way for us to circumvent all the possible hazards of the other route. But after a couple of hours wandering up the glacier, we all had the same feeling that the route that we were looking at was not safe and, therefore, we, as a group, made the decision to turn around and come back to Camp I.
And yesterday most of us also made the decision that that would be the end of the expedition. There just didn't seem any safe way for us to climb the mountain by the north side.
We spent our second night at Camp I last night and today we packed it all up; we had huge loads, managed to get ourselves back down to Base Camp and here we are safe and sound. Disappointed that we didn't climb the mountain, but all understanding the reasons for turning around; they're all legitimate reasons. We're all very conservative about how we go about climbing and there really wasn't any rational way for us to continue climbing with all the dangers that were surrounding us.
So here we are at Base Camp; the expedition is basically over. We're getting ready to go home in a few days. I'll call back tomorrow and I'll let the other members talk on the phone and give their opinions and point of views and I think it might be quite interesting to see what they have to say about how things came about. So here we are safe and sound; we're having a nice dinner right now and, again, we're sad that we didn't climb the mountain, but we're safe and sound and that's the way it goes sometimes. That's it for now, Ed Viesturs signing out on the Mountain Zone.
— Ed Viesturs, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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