Ed Viesturs' Quest for the 8,000 meter peaks

Viesturs

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Veikka Gustafsson:
Hello everyone visiting MountainZone, this is Veikka Gustafsson speaking from Annapurna Base Camp. So, it's almost time to go home. We didn't reach the top. Earlier, a couple of years ago, when I came from an expedition, I didn't reach the top, so there were some people waiting for me at the airport so they asked me "how do you feel right now when you went through that big disappointment?" To be honest, I feel a little bit disappointed, but anyhow we've had a great time and for myself, personally, that's the main thing on these expeditions.

I didn't know Neal and Michael that well in the beginning, but now, unfortunately, they know me! [laughter in the background] But what I was trying to tell, that for me, very often, getting to the summit is sort of a bonus on these kind of trips and this time we didn't get the bonus, but we had all the rest of the good things.

We had a good time together, we did some climbing which was different than what I've done before. Normally on these big peaks, we don't climb that much on rock. We climbed a little bit of rock between Base Camp and Camp I. And I've haven't been in the Annapurna area before and this is really nice and cool. Cool area and it was nice to see that.

And what is really good, too, is that the mountain, you know, Annapurna, it will stay here. It's 360 degrees around the summit and now we have seen maybe 180 degrees and then there's still 180 degrees to go and find another, at least safe, route. So we'll see in the future if we ever try to climb this one again, but still I feel we had a great expedition and I really enjoyed my time and you know, these were my regards to all the visitors and MountainZone and stay visiting and we try in the future to organize some more things to follow, bye from here.

Neal Beidleman:
Hello, this is Neal Beidleman, and of course we're all disappointed that we didn't make it to the top, but in many ways that was secondary to what our main objective was and that was to come here, to climb safely, to have a great time and we did that. Maybe we were too conservative with our decisions, but we'll never know. Had we not been too conservative and gone the other way, maybe we never would have known that either.

And I feel very good, Ed's been a great leader, I'm very happy to have been a part of this expedition. We all leave here tremendous friends, and that's always super important to me. Just enjoyed being here, it's always good to be outside and challenging yourself and maybe sometimes you get to the top, sometimes you don't. Anyway, that's it for me, thanks a lot, bye.

Michael Kennedy:
This is Michael Kennedy and I certainly echo the sentiments of my teammates, we've had a great time here. I think we've made some good decisions. It's always hard to turn back when you've put a lot of effort and time and money into getting half way around the world. But, it's better, in my mind, to turn back and be able to climb another day, rather than put yourself too much at risk. So, thanks for tuning in and following this expedition, it's been a great time and hopefully you'll hear from us again. Bye bye.

— Ed Viesturs, Veikka Gustafsson, Neal Beidleman and Michael Kennedy, MountainZone.com Correspondents


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EXPEDITION DISPATCHES