Top of the morning to you everybody out there in cyberland. We are going for the summit. We're about halfway between Camp III and the Yellow Band, which is the famous black band of great yellow sandstone that the route has to cross in a traverse over to a rock buttress, called the Geneva Spur. And we in turn have to cross the Geneva Spur to get to the South Col.

So we're a quarter to a third of the way there. It's a very nice day today. It started out with a gorgeous sunrise at Camp III as I reported earlier, nice light on Nuptse. Then we had forecasted high humidity and that kind of came in the form of some ... clouds and a few other puffy things floating around here and there so we were swathed in mist for a while here this morning. That actually made for comfortable climbing in a lot of our heavy clothing.

Now things are clear. We're looking at a lot of blue sky. It is extremely hot with the sun being reflected off the snow on the Lhotse Face. So we're all stopping and shedding clothes which is a very difficult proposition perched in the middle of a 35-degree ice face, but we're all managing that, so far, okay, with no losses.

Cleve [McDonald]earlier ended up with a cold foot and he actually had to stop and take a boot off in the middle of the Lhotse Face to warm his feet, but got that all warmed again without the loss of equipment which is very good.

We're all moving very, very strongly up towards our high camp at the South Col today. So we'll probably give you another update a little later on today on how things are going. It's an absolutely gorgeous day to be high in the Himalayas and high in the Himalayas we all certainly are.

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

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