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Preparing for the Summit Bid
Deboche- Saturday, May 11, 2002

Prittie
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Hello to everybody out there in Mountain Zone cyberland, this is Willi Prittie reporting from the Alpine Ascents Everest team.

As we reported last from Base Camp, we were headed down to some low elevation for a good rest and recovery period before we tackled the summit.

As I speak I am sitting here in the beautiful mixed rhododendron and pine forest of Deboche which is just a little over 12,000 feet in altitude. We're all a little intoxicated from both the thick air and also the sensory overload after seeing nothing but rock and ice and snow for weeks at Base Camp and above on the mountain. It's very beautiful down here.
"So while Mount Everest is having its tantrum with the weather up high, we are down here enjoying a very good rest and recovery period and preparing ourselves both physically and psychologically for our summit bid...."

Most all of us from North America are used to rhododendrons being an ornamental bush. Here in the Himalayas they grow tree-sized; a full mature one may be two feet in diameter at the base and actually a 30-foot high narrow tree, so they're very, very spectacular.

Also the forest floor is, at this time of year, spring, pretty much a carpet of various different colored wildflowers. So it's quite intoxicating for the senses to come down here for the... and take oxygen....dimly remember but don't really expect...ice and rock and snow for the whole time.

And, in general, we're just trying to rest up and prepare ourselves for going back up on the mountain and the summit bid. And last word that we had heard the day that we left Base Camp and hiked down to Pheriche was that the jet stream winds were coming back to the upper mountain of Everest for a few days and weather was very bad.

So while Mount Everest is having its tantrum with the weather up high, we are down here enjoying a very good rest and recovery period and preparing ourselves both physically and psychologically for our summit bid.

So that's all at this point from Deboche at 12,500 feet in the rhododendron forest. — Willi Prittie, Alpine Ascents International Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent

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