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Hanna Turns Around at South Summit
South Col - Tuesday, May 23, 2000  1:24pm Nepal Time

DISPATCHES

Henke

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Hello MountainZone, this is Ellie Henke calling in from Alpine Ascents Base Camp on Mount Everest. It's been a while since we called in, its been an exciting day, lots of things happening. We had a big change in weather, from terrible this morning, wind on the mountain, snow down here below, but this afternoon cleared off and turned out to be fairly sunny before developing into a final afternoon, little bit of cumulus thundershower build up here, shouldn't be too bad.

The climbing team had a busy day up on the mountain. The big news is that Al Hanna made it as far as the South Summit and at that point , at a quarter to eleven at the time, and they had been climbing since about 9:30 last night, this has been a long night, they have been out for a long time. And Al pretty much ran out of steam at the south summit and decided to call it good at that point. So at about a quarter to eleven, he and Vernon and several of the Sherpas did turn around and headed back down the mountain. At this point they have not reached the South Col yet and I'll plan on calling in again when everybody is safe and sound at the South Col.

In the meantime we had three Sherpas who did go on all the way to the summit. They were Chawang Nima Sherpa, Mingma Sherpa, and also Kami Rita Sherpa, all three did make it to the summit today. And we're real proud of them. And glad to have had them as a part of the team.

In between all of this, Willi had a little adventure today. He was lagging a little bit behind the rest of the group after he stopped for a few minutes to warm his feet up. So he was catching up with everybody else when his second oxygen bottle... he discovered that was running a little bit low and he ran out of oxygen below the south summit and ended up climbing on for a little while without oxygen but realized he wasn't getting real far real fast. So through our radio system we were able to communicate with some of the folks that were on ahead and have them come down and bring him a new bottle of oxygen. So he went a period of time without bottled oxygen. He did go ahead and climb on to the South Summit but was feeling a little stress in his lungs and decided to call it good at that point so he doesn't do permanent damage to his lungs.

And he and the three Sherpas who went all the way to the summit are now together and also heading back down to the South Col. Like I say it's been a busy day, lots of excitement out there and we're looking for the group to get back safely down to the South Col. So I'll call back again in a bit when we have confirmation that everybody is down there. So that's it from Base Camp for now, and we'll be back with you soon.

— Ellie Henke, Alpine Ascents and MountainZone.com Correspondent

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