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You are here: Everest Home >>South Col Climb >>Dispatches >>Dispatch
Moving Up, Slowly but Surely
Camp III - Saturday, May 20, 2000
DISPATCHES
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What's happening Mountain Zone. This is Vern Tejas with Alpine Ascents International at 23,000 feet, Camp III, high above the Western Cwm. We just [Unintelligible] winds [Unintelligible] and we're thankful we've got beautiful views all over God's creation. We're looking down at the Western Cwm and the clouds are dancing around quite nicely in the breeze. Up high we can see a plume blowing off the top of Mount Everest.
We're getting ourselves into position; we're moving up slowly but surely and tonight, of all nights, we get to finally sleep on oxygen. We are looking forward to that. Our heads have little headaches and we've been trying to catch our breath all day after climbing up steep, blue ice, the last couple thousand feet. We are now cached in what I'd say is a precarious place, but a beautiful place.
Now many of you have wondered what mountaineers wear and I just wanted to mention to you that, of course with these inverted conditions we have to take into account all sorts of temperatures that most of us start with a basic, long john combination and then we cover that with a suit of pile, top and bottom, and then after, of course, comes our windchill layer and then for summitting we have a down suit, a one-piece down suit that covers our whole body with four inches of insulation — goose down of course, nothing but the finest for us climbers. However, this afternoon we were bombarded by intense solar radiation and we had to get down to our long johns and even less just to put up with the heat of the day. So you can see life as a mountaineer isn't always as fun as you think. And we are looking forward to tomorrow, moving up the mountain, ending at the High Camp, Camp IV, which is in the Col at 26,300...[transmission fails].
— Vern Tejas, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent
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