Top of the morning to all you Mountain Zoners out there, it's actually approaching evening here at Camp II on Mount Everest. This is Willi Prittie reporting for the Alpine Ascents Team and yes we are back down to camp II.

It was spectacular weather as we noted in the last cybercast when we went up, however we had a weather system that came in early and got light to moderate snowfall pretty much all night and all morning. So we aborted a little longer acclimation hike. We did actually go a little bit above Camp III on the fixed lines to get a little more acclimation. And pretty much returned and came back down to what we now consider the thicker air of Camp II.

It was pretty much snowing, an intermittent white-out and gray-out all the way down. And there was two things of note: a few people actually did discover that our method of descending the fixed lines with the safety back-up works, because you stop immediately instead of sliding down to the next anchor. So I think that improved the confidence level and people actually did a very reasonable job, a very credible job of going down the first shot down.

It's always a little mentally intimidating when you're on something as big as the Lhotse Face and as steep as the Lhotse Face to actually work your way down, especially when you're having to deal with weather conditions and everything at the same time.

In any case everybody is back at Camp II, safe and sound and looking forward to another excellent dinner by our Camp II cook Ang Tsering here tonight. And also Karl wanted to say 'hi' to Kelly on this cybercast as well. And I think that'll close it down for this day up at the edge of the Western Cwm on Mount Everest.

— Willi Prittie, Alpine Ascents International Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent

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