NEPAL TIME: 
|  Manaslu (8163m) and Dhaulagiri (8167m) |
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Ed and Veikka Summit Dhaulagiri Monday, May 3, 1999 — 11:11pm (PST)
 Hear Ed's Call from NepalClick for [RealAudio] [Windows Media](Requires FREE RealPlayer or Windows Media) |
Hello everybody, oh that's a great voice, isn't it. It's May 4th and it's about noon and, guess what, this morning at a quarter 'til eleven, Veikka Gustafsson and I reached the summit of Dhaulagiri. Whoo! We're already on our way down now. We spent maybe a half an hour on the summit. Once again it was cold and windy, and not wanting to waste time, we decided just to take a few photos and beat a retreat and get down the mountain as fast as we could.
We left our camp this morning at a little after two and it took us about eight-and-a-half hours to reach the summit. It was a long, long day once again. Snow conditions were good for the most part, really firm. We had a lot of steep climbing, a lot of traversing. It's a long way to go from where the High Camp is [Unintelligible] and then you get to the summit ridge and you got to climb over [Satellite Signal Fails]
[Ed resumes call from High Camp] Hi it's Ed Viesturs and Veikka Gustafsson. We're back in High Camp. It took us about two hours to get down to Camp and wouldn't you know it, as soon as we left the summit the clouds moved in and we had a bit of a snowstorm, some wind and thankfully we had some wands that I put in earlier in the day, we were able to find our way back. We had fixed rope in a couple a sections. But it was kind of a miserable descent, it was snowing, it was windy and we had hoped to get here to High Camp, pack up and keep going, but the weather was so bad and we were pretty tired by then and the snow conditions had worsened. There was about two inches of new snow here and there and it was the consistency of dry sugar, and traction was minimal — so we were working very hard not to be slipping and sliding.
So one more night here on the mountain. Tomorrow morning we're going to get up early, pack up and go down to Base Camp and then the climb will be finished. Right now it's pretty windy outside. We'll have to spend one more night in this tiny little tent, but I think tonight we're going to sleep pretty good. The last few nights, neither one of us, I don't think, slept very good and when we got back into camp here at 2:30, we just plopped in and took a nice little nap. It's a nice feeling when you done climbing, done going up and your still going down, but the main part, the gist of the descent is over.
So we're both very happy. We're going to go to bed now, it's about 7:00 at night, but tomorrow we complete the climb, we're going to go down to Base Camp. We'll check in again when we get to Base Camp. That's it for now at Dhaulagiri.
— Ed Viesturs, Mountain Zone Correspondent
| EXPEDITION DISPATCHES | |
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[Viesturs Photo Gallery]
