Simonson

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Hello, Mountain Zone. This is Eric Simonson back down at Advanced Base Camp with a report for you on the last three days, which have been very interesting and exciting for all of us.

We started out by heading up to Camp I, a trip that we had done twice before, for acclimatization and then for an overnight, to sleep at Camp I. This time we hiked up there and again spent the night in our tents at Camp I. And then the next day we moved all the way up to Camp II, which is quite an interesting part of the mountain.

Ice Cliff

The route starts out from Camp I and ascends several steep sections of the ridge which have fixed rope on them, and then climbs further up to the famous ice cliff pitch, which is about 150ft of reasonably steep terrain, with a little bit of ice at the bottom and then very steep snow on the upper part. Above the ice cliff, we cross what we refer to as "the football field," which is a plateau section that then takes you to the final headwall, which ascends up into the Camp II area.

It was quite hot yesterday afternoon as we were ascending the headwall, believe it or not. Even at 23,000ft in the Himalaya, with the sun beating down on you and the snow all around you, it can get quite warm. We weren't complaining too much because heat is exactly what we need to stabilize the snowpack. And the route had been fixed the day or two before, by our Sherpas, so the combination of fixed rope and heat going into the snowpack made us feel reasonably good about its stability.

We pushed on up to Camp II and pitched our tents up there. We had four Mountain Hardwear Trango tents there at Camp II, at 23,000ft and we spent a reasonably comfortable night. I don't think anybody got too much sleep, but — seeing as how it was our first night at Camp II — but we all did okay. This morning we woke up early and reversed our tracks back down to Camp I and then back down to Advanced Base Camp and we're all back here safe and sound. We just got done putting away a big lunch that Pemba made for us, and a lot of drinks, and we're going to take a couple days now to rest before we go back up for our summit push.

So, everything is going well, and I'm happy to report that our trip to Camp II went well. Over the next couple of days I'd like to give you some more reports on how the route is going on into Camp III — I think our Sherpas will be back up within a day or two to work on the route to III — and give you more feedback on the conditions of the upper mountain. The weather seems to be improving a little bit. We're still getting some snow, but it seems to be tapering off and it's getting a little cooler at night, so it makes me think that maybe the monsoon is winding down.

Okay, that's about it for now, and we'll have more later. Good-bye.

— Eric Simonson, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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