November 10, 2007 – Climb to Island Peak Base Camp

It is easy to understand the popularity of Island Peak with both climbers and trekkers here in the valley. It’s a little bit different than the main valley that people trek going up to Everest Base Camp. We run more east west here, so it gets a lot more sun and it is a very broad valley which offers wonderful views.

Today we had a great day of trekking. We left Dingboche at 14,100 feet and base camp is at 16,700 feet, so quite a jump for us there today. We went over a fair distance, it didn’t seem all that steep. But was two fairly long days of trekking back to back.

Tomorrow we have chosen to take a rest day before we attempt our climb. We will be able to use that day to our advantage here at Island Peak. We will brush up on how to travel up fixed ropes and rappel; skills that we will use on Island Peak and also on Ama Dablam. The climbers Jack, Don and now Paul are doing very well. It is 8 o’clock right now [lost transmission]... I am here amongst the yaks and a brilliant  sky, very clear. Today was very windy and as we were trudging up the valley there were huge swells of snow leaving Lhotse heading off into Tibet. So we will cross our fingers and hope that those winds take a rest as we prepare for our climb on Island Peak.