Manaslu (8163m) and Dhaulagiri (8167m)

In Kathmandu Two Days Early Monday, May 10, 1999 — 3:53am (PST) Viesturs Hear Ed's Call from Nepal Click for  [RealAudio]  [Windows Media] (Requires FREE RealPlayer or Windows Media)

After I reported on Saturday night, from the village of Marpha, a few hours later, believe it or not, our porters and our cook showed up from Base Camp. They did a tremendous job and they made it in one push coming all the way from Base Camp to Marpha in 14 hours, something it had taken Veikka and myself nine hours. It took them 14 hours, but we have to remember they were all carrying 65 pound loads and rather than spending the night out camping and doing it in two days they decided also to come down in one day.

So Saturday night, we had a cook with us and we had all of our gear. We had arranged for tickets on the following morning, Sunday, so we got a flight out the next day on Sunday, which was yesterday, out of Jomson, flew to Pokhara and arrived here in Kathmandu at around 1 o'clock in the afternoon. So we're quite happy to be here, apparently the monsoon is already started. What we've heard from the news, every afternoon we are getting some clouds and some rain and they really, really, really need some rain here.

So, we're back in town we're just finalizing our reports for the Ministry of Tourism; we've met with our trekking agency. Veikka and I sorted through all of our equipment and the remainder of our food which we typically leave here rather than carting it back and forth from Nepal to the US and back, we have a storage unit here where we leave a lot of our climbing gear, tents, etc... and we have a couple of barrels of food left over, stuff that we didn't use. I guess we didn't eat enough and we climbed too fast, so we're going to leave it here for a climb or two that we hope to come back in the next following year or two. I'm planning on coming back, leaving Kathmandu, here on Wednesday, and Veikka will be leaving here on Thursday.

So we are just kind of hanging out and buttoning up the end of our expedition. We feel really good about we did and just kind of hearing snippets of news of what is going on, on Mount Everest and other peaks in the region. A lot of people have had great successes, simply because the weather has been good. The snow conditions have been good and it seems, like I have mentioned, the weather is changing so I don't know what's happening in the mountains right now but I think things are going to start probably deteriorating unless we get a break in the weather pattern that appears to be coming through.

Veikka and I are really happy about what we did and how we did it. It was an adventure for both of us, even though we've climbed mountains that have been climbed before by routes that have been climbed before, they were totally new routes and mountains for us. There was really literally nobody else on the mountains that we were on; we were ahead of other groups; we were exploring routes, so, for us, it was a lot of fun and a complete, complete adventure seeking these peaks; and, reaching our summits simply for the first time, places that we had never gone before. So a great and enjoyable adventure for both of us. Veikka having now climbed 7 8,000 meter peaks and myself having climbed 12 8,000 meter peaks.

We're really happy, we're looking forward to going home and spending wonderful summers, Veikka in Finland and myself in Seattle, so I will be probably signing off. I may be calling tomorrow night after, but there is really not a lot of activity around here [Failed Transmittal] reception and we have invited along the local dignitaries and a lot [Failed Transmittal] it'll be a great ending to what we consider was a really, really, really fun, quick climbing trip here in Nepal, having climbed to of the world's highest peaks in the world. This is Ed signing off from Kathmandu.

— Ed Viesturs, Mountain Zone Correspondent

EXPEDITION DISPATCHES