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Climbers at a Standstill
Camp II - Tuesday, May 2, 2000

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Tejas

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Good morning Mountain Zone, this is Vernon Tejas high on the flanks of Mount Everest, with Alpine Ascents. It's our Everest 2000 climb. We're at Camp II and, if patience is a virtue and a little more won't hurt you, we're doing just wonderful.

It's snowing and blowing. We woke up this morning to about six inches of new snow on the ground, burying our tents, blowing in through the open vents — talk about a refreshing way to wake up, indeed it was. We went out for a little hike today and found out that breaking trail through fresh snow is not exactly a good thing to do at 21,000 feet. The whole mountain has come to a standstill, no one is climbing, only a few people have descended from Camp III.

It looks like, right now, that we're in for maybe another day or two of this. So we're biding our time: telling jokes and for dinner's entertainment everyone in our group is bringing a trick to dinner. So we can enlighten and entertain each other. So what tricks would you bring to dinner if you wanted to pass the time? And remember it's got to last more than five minutes otherwise it's not really going to meet the entertainment value that we need.

As soon as this clears off, we're planning on going up to Camp III and get our final acclimatization push. Camp III is located about 23,000-feet up on the Lhotse Face, about 7000 meters. But in the meantime we're just twiddling our thumbs, trying to stay warm, and enjoying the great, wide Himalayan wilderness. Stay tuned kids, we'll get back to you tomorrow. That's all from Nepal.

— Vern Tejas, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent

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