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Wishes and Weather Windows
Deboche- May 12, 2002

Prittie
Prittie
DISPATCHES
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Good Morning to you all out there, this is Willi Prittie reporting again from the entire Alpine Ascents 2002 Everest Expedition for our second full rest day down in Deboche in the forested regions of Nepal.

Everybody is feeling very good, sleeping very good, eating like horses down here and that's kind of what it's all about. It looks like today the weather has changed. I'm sitting here up in the rhododendron forest and I have in view Nuptse and Lhotse and there's a fair amount of wind over the summit with a plume blowing off, but it is in fact clear and you can see that far today unlike the last few days where things have been pretty socked in by clouds and there's been afternoon rain coming through.

"...it looks like our weather has definitely improved here and perhaps we're going to get our first weather window of the season for good summit conditions...."

So it looks like soon there's going to be some movement up on the mountain and by tomorrow most of the expedition here will actually start back up towards Base Camp. Today the plan is for Vernon and Al Hanna to start up early, take another rest day in Pheriche, and join us in Pheriche. And in part that is simply to break up the three days of uphill travel and make it a bit easier and less hard on knees and such to get back to Base Camp.

At any rate we're going to work very hard on our eating of additional calories here at Deboche today and get one more good day of rest before we get back up on the mountain.

Also, everybody on the expedition is united in wanting to wish Happy Mother's Day to everybody back in the United States and elsewhere, and that's to mothers, to grandmothers, to sisters and all that good stuff. And I'd personally like to say a big Happy Birthday to my brother Michael Prittie in Seattle, Washington and to my sister, Susan Keith, in Tacoma, Washington.

'Hi Mom!' says Ellie. And pretty much that's it for us, not a lot going on. But as I'm saying this I'm sure there's going to be a lot of movement going on in other expeditions, from Base Camp on up the mountain because it looks like our weather has definitely improved here and perhaps we're going to get our first weather window of the season for good summit conditions going on here.

So that's all for now from Deboche, deep in the rhododendron forest of the valleys of Nepal.

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

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