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Time To Pack Up And Head Out
Dispatch 12.7

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Hello, Peter, this is Jim Williams, Alpine Ascents International Ama Dablam 2002 Expedition on, what's the date? Saturday the, I believe, the 7th of December.

Let me catch you up from when I took back over the broadcast. Okay, on the 5th, on the 4th, excuse me, there was a summit attempt, which was successful, with Chris Nichols, Randy Luskey, and Dave Morton reaching the summit, along with the sherpa Nimatashi, around just after mid-day. They returned to Camp III, Nimatashi returned to Camp I, and then Dave, Chris and Randy carried down their personal gear to Camp II, and eventually all the way to Base Camp that day, that would have been the 5th.

On the 5th, Houck Reed and myself were at Camp II, positioned to go for the summit, and then back to from Camp II to the summit, and then back to Camp III. I, unfortunately, had developed a fairly serious cough and chest infection, and so I was going down, and Houck was going to continue with sherpas. At that point he decided that he did not want to continue, and so, the mountain would still be here, and he would come back another time.

And so we turned everybody around and brought everybody down to Base Camp on the night of the 5th. And we got everybody here by, oh, just after dark, and had a nice dinner.

Yesterday, which was the 6th, all of our team members, all of our sherpas and some yaks, went back up to Camp I to clean all of our gear off the mountain, and brought it down by yaks, by yesterday afternoon.

We had loaned a couple of tents to another expedition at Camp III, and they (hadn't) cleaned them off the mountain yesterday. So, we sent somebody up this morning, the 7th, to pick up those two remaining tents and any rubbish and stuff that was related to that, and we are packing our gear on the 7th here at Base Camp, so that we will be out of here by the night of the 7th to Pangboche with all of our gear packed and ready to go.

Then the plan is, on the 8th, to walk to Namche Bazaar, and then on the 9th to walk to Lukla. And then on the 10th we may fly, or the 11th we may fly. That depends on how it all goes. So there's the catch-up, and now for the details of the day.

Ok, everybody here at Base Camp, we've had some change in weather, although it hasn't snowed or rained on us here since we've been here, we've been extremely lucky. There is a change overhead, and we're getting some high clouds that are very, well they're very spectacular high clouds, high winds up high.

And there's only one party left on the mountain. There is a Japanese individual with two sherpas attempting to summit, we believe, today. Other than that, all the other teams are off and headed down.

We look north at Tibet, there's these big clouds roaring across Cho Oyu to Everest. Big lenticulars that just link the two together.

So we're, but everybody else is here, everybody's feeling well, some guys have had their first shave in months. I think some guys didn't shave before the expedition are shaving today, shave off beards and everything to get presentable to go home. And we're all in pretty good spirits.

Fortunately, I was having a fight with some sort of chest infection and that's now over. I've taken the appropriate medication and I'm feeling a little better. I can walk between tents without having to stop to breathe all the time. So, we're packing up and getting ready to go. Everybody's pretty happy, people have talked to home by phone, people are pretty excited to get on their way.

I'm sure they'll become impatient soon. Ok, talk to you again tomorrow. Thanks, bye.

Jim Williams, Alpine Ascents International Senior Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent