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Predatory Beast Stalks Climbers
Camp II- May 21, 2002

Prittie
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Everest 2002 Dispatch Photo
Up to Camp III
(New Window)
Greetings everybody out there in cyberland, once again this is Willi Prittie reporting from Mount Everest in this year 2002.

We are up at Camp II, took a rest and acclimation day here. I'm not sure how much more acclimatized we can get at this stage but the very accurate weather report that we have here is forecasting 60-knot winds at the 24,000-foot level near where Camp III is and 70-knot winds at the 30,000-foot level over the summit. And we decided that would not be a wise thing to be climbing up into so we elected to stay here, wait it out and rest for a day.

"When the wind gets this high I often think in terms of a giant predatory beast stalking the upper mountains in search of its prey. Of course, their prey are climbers..."
As it turned out we all believe that was a very smart thing to do. All night last night was just a freight train roar of high winds over all of the summits, Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse, up here that surround us here at the site of the head of the Western Cwm.

When the wind gets this high I often think in terms of a giant predatory beast stalking the upper mountains in search of its prey. Of course, their prey are climbers, we fearful climbers that try to take refuge in our gossamer homes that we call expeditions tents up here.

In any rate we seem to have dodged most of the bullet. It was quite gusty on and off last night and all through this morning. One of those phantom gusts came down and went asunder our eating tent up here which is a not very well designed Eureka tent and so Vernon's hard work managed to sew that up with dental floss. So we still do in fact have an eating tent here at Camp II.

But in any regard we hope that's all behind us and it's a very calm, beautiful, sunny evening here at Camp II and it's looking like things are probably going to be good in order to proceed up to camp III tomorrow morning. So we're all looking forward to actually proceeding up the mountain and getting on with the climb here and hopefully enjoying good weather in the process.

So that's all this evening from Mount Everest, of course this would be morning for all of you hooking into this in the internet and we'll keep you posted as things progress.

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

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