Contents [Ski Everest Home] Front page for the Skiing Everest Cybercast [UPDATES] Climbers call from Everest on a sat-phone [The North Side] Climbing guide Eric Simonson describes the Northeast Ridge Route [Meet the Team] The 1997 Everest Ski Expedition members [EVEREST '97] Rich multimedia cybercast from Everest [Sponsors] Companies that supported this effort The Everest Bookstore Click on a book for details and ordering info from The Mountain Zone Bookstore. "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer An epic, first-hand account of the 1996 tragedy. "Everest" by Walt Unsworth Thorough compilation of historic climbs, triumph and tragedy. "Everest Map" by Brad Washburn National Geographic centennial map, Washburn's Everest map and more. "Everest: The West Ridge" by Tom Hornbein The pioneering ascent by Unsoeld and Hornbein. [The Mountain Zone] More stories from The Mountain Zone			Updates From Everest Click here to get the FREE Real Audio Player to hear sat-phone calls. Calonica Grim Report Tuesday, September 30, 1997 (Everest North Face base camp, Tibet) [Click to hear the sat-phone call.] Transcript: Hello, it's Craig Calonica at Everest base camp, Tuesday evening the 30th, at 7:35 pm. Got down late yesterday evening — well, about eight o'clock in the evening. It was good that we did; when we woke up it was snowing and blowing like you can't even believe. The mountain up higher is just totally closed in. It's going to be like that for a few more days from what we've been getting told by the $200-a-day weather satellite-phone things from the British and the Spanish and all these guys that are rigged into something that they believe can tell what is going to happen here, twelve thousand miles from their home. Half of the stuff that's been told in some of these weather reports has been somewhat close, and the rest is your basic expensive guestimate weather report. It's best always to look up in the sky to see what is happening. But for sure, here, it's going to continue to be bad for a few more days. You can just see it. It's extremely windy and it's tearing every tent around in sight just apart. So, definitely no reason to be up high at the moment. You couldn't, as a matter of fact. Anyway, we're down here. The Swiss — Jean Troillet and Stefan — are out of here; the Colombians are out of here in a couple days. It seems that due to their departure, some other teams are starting to get influenced, and this doomsday weather report scene is starting to affect them, and it looks to me that they may be leaving soon; I don't know. We're not leaving. We're not going anywhere. We're hanging here tight until there's definitely no way around it. So we'll be here resting for a few days at the lower elevations of 17,000 feet. And as soon as we get somewhat of a little break in the weather, we'll go back up and see what we can do. Okay, that's about it, and we'll be in touch tomorrow and let you know the latest news. If anything is interesting, you'll be the first to know. Take it easy. Bye-bye. — Craig Calonica, Expedition Leader PREVIOUS UPDATE | UPDATES HOME | NEXT UPDATE

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