DISPATCHES

Mazur

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Today was especially difficult and horrible—high winds, blowing snow and fog. Still, we were able to move up the mountain a bit. This East Ridge— Dragon Ridge, we are calling it— is a very rough piece of work. It winds and twists and goes on forever. The summit doesn't seem to be getting any closer. Today, we crawled across at least 15 large and scary avalanche fracture lines; we think they are from the large snowfall we received three days or so before. Our present blizzard does not bode well.

In an earlier executive decision, not without controversy, some of the members of our team decided we should save weight and not bring the snowshoes. Well, just like it always rains when you forget your umbrella, the snow has been waist deep, and slowing us down with our heavy packs.

Tonight we did not establish camp until 8:30pm; it took us that long to try and find a place we thought might be safe from avalanches. Basically, we are camped just under a corniced ridge, on the windward side. Our tent is anchored to the base-ice with screws and pickets, so we reckon it would take an earthquake to dislodge us.

We spoke tonight on the walkie-talkie radio with Anne Ramzy and Yang Li Cun, who, together with Lakpa Tamang, are in the process of packing up Base Camp and moving it down to the Amphitheater Camp.

The next several days should bring more excitement, depending on what cards the weather deals us. Our big question now is if we can hike through all of the deep snow to the summit, which looms directly above us. When the wind calmed this afternoon around 3pm, I heard some horrible cracking and avalanches sweeping down from that direction.

That's it for now, wake-up call is in just five hours. Thanks very much, yours sincerely, Dan.

— Dan Mazur, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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