Wally Berg

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Dawa, Lhakpa, and Pasang Tsering [click to zoom]

At this point in the expedition, there is a lot of work going on, and there's a lot of work going on, and there are quiet heroes virtually every day. Certainly, three guys that are in that role right now, Lhakpa and Pasang Tsering, the two Camp II cooks, and the one Sherpa, Dawa, from Thakshindu, who is also known as GPS Dawa for the work he did with the Geo Explorer earlier in the trip, lower on the mountain. Those two guys are holding down the camp up there. There is a lot involved with that. We have a number of tents including one rather high profile cook tent that is really key to our camp up there that those guys have to struggle to stay up. I think that it was a rather sleepless night for them last night and it only relented a little bit during the day today.

So our radio contact with them has been important to us to monitor what's going up there, and also I hope just to keep their moral up a little bit. I don't know if I mentioned yesterday but Lhakpa ran out of cigarettes, so on our next carry up to Camp II we need to get him some cigarettes, and there is some other items as well that we want to get up there. But those guys are holding down the fort, so to speak and doing an excellent job of that. It's a situation that is serious for all the expeditions on the mountain right now in terms of keeping it in place.

The other part of this is Dawa, from Thakshindu, has been over the last few days has been doing the climb up to Camp III every other day to dig out tents and to try to keep that Camp III in place for us. As you know, those tents are on ledges scarcely as wide as the tent profile itself. They're susceptible to a lot of drifting snow in this type of weather and his efforts has helped us keep things in place at Camp III as well.

The Col itself is stocked. As you might imagine if you haven't guessed, or I haven't mentioned, you never erect tents at the South Col until we go up there. The risks for losing them are just far too high. Certainly if we had tried to do that, they would be gone. So when I say that the South Col is in place or stocked, it only means that the supplies are up there, not that we have actually put up tents. We'll take care of that when we decide to move up.

With all this talk about bad weather, you may not be surprised to hear that we've taken our best guess based on weather information still coming out of London and our own best instincts, and we have put the summit off for one more day yet. That means that we will not leave base camp, the climbing members will not leave base camp, until the day after tomorrow, that's May 12th. Our day will be, we hope, it will be Saturday May 16th. This weather will have to pass eventually and hopefully it will be well passed by that time. Even as soon as tomorrow, we'll have a Sherpa carry going to Camp II, and the day after, as we move up, we don't really care what the weather is like, just so within a couple days after that as we move beyond Camp II to Camp III, these winds are dropping and the weather is improving. That's it for me for tonight. Best wishes, and you'll hear more from us very soon.

— Wally Berg, Expedition Leader

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