January 7, 2008 – Getting Closer to the Summit

It's the 7th of January and I'm calling you once again from Condor's camp, Camp 2. Some of our staff here are like Bolivian superheroes, Waldo and Simon. Those guys walked all the way back down to Plaza camp and filled up their packs with the food we need to continue this climb and came back up this morning and while they were at it, they cleaned up our rubbish. These guys are truly amazing.

Today, we've been watching the sky a lot and we've been particularly interested in our weather forecast. You have not been receiving any photos and we have not been able to access the weather reports because our internet has not been reliable, so what we have been doing is using our satellite phones for our weather reports from Leila's brother Guilherme in Rio de Janeiro (who has climbed Aconcagua with us before). Starting tomorrow we will be receiving our weather from Canmore, at the Berg Adventures International office as Tracy will be sending us our reports by phone.

Today, the weather forecast from Rio de Janeiro gave us a mixed report but we feel confident that it's time to move up to Berlin High Camp tomorrow, 19,600 feet. Just to make sure we can do that, we'll take a small hike this afternoon. Wally, Kate and Nathan started towards Berlin camp and then decided to come back and organize our packs but Leila, and John and Philip went all the way to Berlin camp and came back with the great news that they were sitting around wearing fewer clothes than we were wearing down here. There was no wind. Some of the team will go back after supper and this time will bring a load up. They will then come back down to get the rest and the whole team can occupy Berlin High Camp tomorrow. We'll call you from high-camp and let you know how we feel when we get up there.