Good evening to everybody out there on Mountain Zone following this Alpine Ascents International 2003 50th anniversary expedition! This is Willi Prittie reporting from Base Camp. Yes, I am finally back at Base Camp, with Jeff, who has regained his health and we're both going to be raring to go here soon.
Base Camp has been a pretty entertaining place here the past couple of days. We've been having some nice ad-lib musical jam sessions, thanks to numerous musicians and the international groups around us. We're surrounded by a Belgian expedition, a French expedition, an Italian expedition and also an Indian and part Nepalese military expedition. So, we've been doing lots of DVD and music exchanges while we're putting in some acclimation time here at Base Camp. We're also getting in some ice climbing practice as well as a few other new things.
On the weather front we were actually glad we were not up on the mountain here yesterday, they had a low pressure trough go through with very high winds at Camp II, lots of tents blown away. I am however happy to announce that the tent that Lahkpa and I had custom made in Argentina, a very large, sturdy, Camp II cooking and dining tent for the Sherpas and dining tent for ourselves, was apparently unaffected by all the winds that were going on up there.
So, that's hardy news from above on the mountain, and for our part we're still waiting to see if we have this upper acclimatization and health... [satellite phone audio becomes garbled from here on out...]
— Willi Prittie, Alpine Ascents International Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent