You are here: Everest Home >>South Col Climb >>Dispatches >>Dispatch

Snow May Delay Summit Tonight
South Col - Sunday, May 21, 2000

DISPATCHES

Henke

Hear Ellie's Call LISTEN: [RealPlayer]  [Windows Media] (Requires a FREE media player to listen)

Hello Mountain Zone, this is Ellie Henke calling from Alpine Ascents International Mount Everest Base Camp, where I've been in contact with the climbing team up on the mountain. Unfortunately, due to the way the radio system is working from Camp IV, I'm having to communicate with them through our radio system at Camp II and patch it down here so we can't get a direct report from the mountain.

However, the team did arrive safely at the South Col at Camp IV today. They left early this morning from Camp III and ascended the upper half of the Lhotse Face, going past the Yellow Band, and on up past the Geneva Spur and arriving at Camp IV at about 4 o'clock this afternoon.

Unfortunately when the arrived there, it was snowing an quite a bit of wind so they dove in the tents right away and have been relaxing there: drinking soup, drinking tea, snuggled in their sleeping bags and breathing that good oxygen out of the cylinders.

Grant

Unfortunately, one of the members, Kevin Grant, was having some more problems with his feet. He's been a real strong member of the party all along, but has been having pains on the bottom of his feet when he climbs the steep slopes, especially like what they climbed on the Lhotse Face. So Kevin opted to turn around at Camp III, and was accompanied by two Sherpas coming down through Camp II, Camp I, and all the way down through the Icefall, and we're happy to have him back safe in Base Camp tonight. So we welcome Kevin back to the Base Camp fold.

On the climbing front, weather here is still pretty unsettled. We've got snow and clouds at Base Camp, and in talking to the folks up at the South Col, the same thing is going on up there. So we'll be doing another radio contact with them at 9:30 tonight, it's currently 7:30, so in a couple hours we'll be talking to them and seeing if the weather has changed at all. But at this point it looks like it's pretty well settled in, and we're not expecting really to see a summit attempt tonight, but we'll find out for sure at 9:30 our time and we'll call in another report at that time just to let everybody know what's going on here.

So that's it from Mount Everest Base Camp and we'll send you another report as soon as we know the climbing plan.

— Ellie Henke, Alpine Ascents Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent

Email this story to a friend