Advance Basecamp, Mt. Everest (via satellite phone)
Elevation: 6350m/20,828ft
Cloudy
9:45am [12:00am EST]

Eric Brown With a Tentative Summit Schedule and ABC Expeditions Interactions

James Asks Eric About Expedition Movement and The Team's Fitness

The WEATHER! This is Eric Brown reporting from Advanced Base Camp for Patagonia Mountain Agency. Today is Friday, May 14th, and currently it is 9:45 in the morning and as I mentioned, the weather is all that anyone cares about now--When will it cooperate? This morning it's mostly cloudly to partly cloudy and 15 degrees Fahrenheit, negative 9.4 degrees Celsius, and we have about 1 inch of new snow. The forecast calls for improving conditions, starting later today with Sunday and Monday the nicest weather. Team 1, Ryszard and Witek, left yesterday to begin their summit attempts and they're at North Col this morning. The American expedition is poised to move higher also. They are at Camps II and North Col (Camp I). Why have so many groups summitted from the Nepal side and only one problem-ridden group from our side? Well, the weather can be totally different between the north and south sides and just as important, the North Ridge route, which expeditions on this side follow, is a much tougher and demanding climb. Yes, compared to this side, the South Col is easy. The average success rate is less than 10% on the north side.

So what is our status? It's varied. Ryszard and Witek, like I said, are at Camp I trying to decide whether to hang [out] at North Col or move up to Camp II. If they stay, it's over for Witek because he has a jeep from base camp to Katmandu on the 18th--not enough time to attempt and get back to base camp to catch his jeep--he has a flight on the 20th. Jacek and Tadek (Team 2) leave in a couple of hours for North Col and will spend tonight in North Col. The Base Camp Lions, as we started to call them--Omar, Ian, Barbara, and Masaru--left early this morning starting their hike up to ABC. They should arrive later today. So by the end of the day, everybody will be here at ABC or higher at different camps. Because of several unknowns at the time of this dispatch, the actual summit schedule is tentative. As it stands now, tomorrow Ryszard and possibly Witek, will be at Camp III (that will be Saturday) with Jacek and Tadek into--at Camp II. That means on Sunday there's a possibility that Ryszard and Witek will be summitting--on May 16-- and that would mean that Tadek and Jacek will be at Camp III and then Team 3, which will most likely be Omar and Ian, will be leaving for the North Col which means the farthest I'm going into the future is Monday, May 17th, with Jacek and Tadek attempting the summit. Confused? [laughter] I'll put in another dispatch tomorrow which will be more concrete.

Hooray!--we received our toilet paper yesterday, in addition to our MRE and re-supply. As far as food to restock the kitchen goes, we were thoroughly disappointed, with only two old cabbages, a brownish head of cauliflower, and a rib shank of dried goat meat were pulled from the bag [laughter]. When the Beach Club [Base Camp] called and was told of this, they laughed, but then they cried when they realized they soon would be eating this. Subsequently, they started calling us the Cabbage Patch.

As I've already alluded to, the climate is very international here--Americans, Britains, Poles, Italians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Russians, French, Japanese, New Zealanders, Swiss, Belgians, Bulgarians, and even a Serbian, plus the local group of Nepalese and Tibetans. You'd think because of the current NATO war against Serbia, ABC and base camp would be divided into respective camps, but in reality, the only bad blood centers around the Georgians who have been blamed for several petty crimes and the Swiss expedition whose members have been involved in heated arguments with the American expedition on the fixed lines. Patagonia Mountain Agency, though, has stayed on good terms with everyone. The Georgians often use our radio as did the Ukrainians, and the Serbian sometimes calls home to check on his family on my American satellite phone. He has even invited me to come visit. So it is more than evident that most people separate you from the government they might despise.

Anyway, that's it from Advanced Base Camp. More information very soon as I will try to keep everyone up-to-date on the latest attempts at the summit from both our group and other groups. This is Eric Brown reporting for Patagonia Mountain Agency.

James interviews Eric--

James: So, it looks like, what, there's one American team pushing up ahead of you?

Eric: They're at Camp II right now. The weather right now at North Col is kinda windy and the snow is blowing so they're kinda hanging out. We've been listening to their radio dispatches also to try to gauge our movements. So it kind of depends on what they say at 10 o'clock and at 12 o'clock this morning whether or not Witek and Ryszard will move up. We were counting on the American [expedition] Sherpas to go up ahead of us to fix the lines from Camp III to summit. The American Sherpas are also hanging out at North Col because of the weather and if that's the case we'll postpone our attempts by a day. That would postpone Ryszard but Jacek and Tadek will pretty much be on schedule as soon as they leave around lunch today.

James: What about any word on any of the other teams? Is it sort of every team's following the team ahead as far as movement?

Eric: No, it's really us and the Americans right now that are pushing for the summit. Most of the other expeditions are a little bit behind in acclimatizing. The Georgians are up at Camp I and maybe Camp II today. But that's as far as they're going. They're going to sleep there one night and they're coming back down. Russell Bryce's expedition, which is New Zealand, he's a New Zealander, but he has different people in his expedition--they're probably 5 days to a week behind, so actually, after the Ukrainians, it could have been us. But because Ryszard and Jacek decided not to spend the extra day at Camp III fixing ropes, which would have exhausted them a little bit more, we kind of fell back and once we found out the Americans were pushing up with their Sherpa team to fix lines, then it kinda got us going again. So hopefully, we'll be pretty much be on the heels of their expedition in terms of summitting. We're looking at Sunday and Monday, the first two teams attempting to summit.

James: All the climbers still looking strong? Still feeling strong?

Eric: Well, yeah, I don't know about the climbers at Base Camp. We'll find out tonight when they arrive. The Brits are doing good. Masaru--we're not positive--he's kind of been complaining of some little pains--aches and pains--but we expect everybody to move up and try for the summit in a couple of days.

James: That's great! That's great!

Eric: Yeah, everybody's looking good and getting excited.

James: OK, I'll pass all of this on. I know everybody's excited to hear it. Stay safe.

Eric: All right, James, I'll talk to you soon.

[We now have pictures of the PMA team and trekkers. Take a look!]