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Simone Moro Robbed in Base Camp
Base Camp - Friday, April 21, 2000

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Editor's Note: The following story was emailed today from Everest Base Camp by Dan Morrison, Quokka Sports/MountainZone.com correspondent.

	Moro

When Simone Moro and partner Denis Urubko returned to Everest Base Camp today after several days higher on the mountain, Moro discovered that his tent had been broken into and valuable items removed.

"They took my digital camera," Moro told Base Camp correspondent Dan Morrison as he looked around at the disarray in his tent. "They took my sleeping bag. Luckily they did not find my money. They also tried to take the satellite telephone."

"I don't understand this," he continued. "At Base Camp I trust it is like a church. But I guess it is not true."

Moro has been climbing quickly, already having been to Camp III after only eight days at Base Camp. "I believe we are going fast. We are running," Moro said.

Moro did not bother to set up the traditional Camp I, and instead went straight to Camp II, Advanced Base Camp. "We went up directly to Camp II," he explained, "put up a tent and slept there. Then, after we came back, we had a three-day rest, and then we took some gear: sleeping bags, food and some other things, and we went again to Camp II. We spent the night there, and yesterday we went to Camp III. We spent the night there and, after, we came down because there are no fixed lines to the South Col."

"But we are happy because we arrived only eight days ago. And we are already in Camp III," he said.

Moro also confirms the Lhotse Face is very icy. "Yes, but it is wonderful," says Moro. "There is no snow, only ice — green ice. The only thing is we put a tent at Camp III about 15 minutes before all the other tents. There are so many yellow tents. But they are the tents that the Sherpas have already prepared there. So to avoid confusion I prefer to stop a little in front of those tents. It's probably about 750 meters to the other tents."

"My plan is," Moro tells me, "to climb to the South Col, put a tent, sleep there, and then after that go down to Dingboche for one week. Sure, I will put a tent at the South Col, and in the morning I will probably climb 200 meters up toward the summit, then I will come down and go to Dingboche."

"It is one of the last things Anatoli Boukreev taught me. He told me, 'You have to go sleep at the South Col, and after go down to Dingboche.'"

Moro will then return to the mountain and predicts he will summit Everest, the first of two summits he hopes to reach on the same climb, about the 9th or 10th of May. After reaching the summit of Everest he will rejoin Urubko at the South Col, then will attempt an unclimbed ridgeline to the summit of Lhotse, and descend the traditional couloir route.

— Simone Moro, Climber, and Dan Morrison, Quokka Sports/MountainZone.com Everest Correspondent

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