NEPAL TIME: 
|  Manaslu (8163m) and Dhaulagiri (8167m) |
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Leaving Manaslu Base Camp Saturday, April 24, 1999 — 9:28pm (PST)
 Hear Ed's Call from NepalClick for [RealAudio] [Windows Media](Requires FREE RealPlayer or Windows Media) |
Hi it's Ed Viesturs reporting on The Mountain Zone here in Nepal. It's Sunday morning April 25th. It's another beautiful day and this is our last full day here at Base Camp. Tomorrow, on Monday we will get our porters up here and we'll hike down to the village of Chame, which I can see from here at Base Camp, and then on Tuesday we will be picked up by a helicopter, assuming the weather is favorable, and it will then fly us over to Dhaulagiri. Depending on the size of the helicopter we can get to the upper Base Camp, or maybe, perhaps, to what's called Italian Base Camp, which is a day below the higher Base Camp. This is depending on the size of the helicopter and the power that it has.
Once we get to Base Camp, though, Veikka and I are ready to go. If the weather is good the following day, perhaps even on Wednesday, we plan to begin our ascent of Dhaulagiri hoping to go continuously, in one push, in three or four days, climbing alpine-style, completely self-supporting. And in three or four days, assuming the weather is good, the snow conditions are good, the climbing conditions are good, we hope to reach the summit in a single push.
So that's what's going on here; it's another beautiful day. Yesterday was a lot of fun here at Base Camp. Two Spanish climbers that also reached the summit, actually they're Catalonian, they followed us to the summit and reached the summit about an hour-and-a-half after we did, on the 22nd. They just got back down to Base Camp yesterday. They were very tired, it took them a day longer to descend than us.
Great international party last night. The Catalonian climbers are also leaving tomorrow. The Germans went back up the mountain today. We wished them well, but last night was one of those nights that really kind of wraps up and caps off a wonderful time here on Manaslu. We all made some really, really good friends and we wished the Germans well and hope that they're successful also.
So we're leaving Base Camp tomorrow morning. We had a great time here. It's a beautiful, beautiful mountain — a great climb, a lot of fun, a lot of hard work, but we're definitely looking forward to giving it a good shot to climb Dhaulagiri and seeing if we can't do it nice and quick and clean. So that's it for now, talk to you in a day or two. Thanks for following, Ed Viesturs signing out.
Once we get to Base Camp we feel things are finally safe and sound and finished.
— Ed Viesturs, Mountain Zone Correspondent
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