October 25 - Inspiring View and Great News

This morning we awoke in our rooms at the Panaroma Lodge in Namche and, after morning "bed tea" and wash water, we walked 5 minutes up the hill to the National Park headquarters.

It was an absolutely clear morning and we were awed by the views of Everest and Lhotse, Towoche, Tamserku and Kwongde.

But the sight that dropped our jaw and gave us all an moment of thrilled silence was the finger of snow, rock and ice jutting far up into the sky that is Ama Dablam, our objective for this expedition.

We stood excitedly and talked of the views of these great peaks and of our route on Ama Dablam, then we hurried back down the hill for breakfast - all of us except for Garry. Gary ran further down the hill to check via telephone from Namche for some news for home about the delivery of his fourth grandchild.

Sure enough, he came back beaming with the news that Jackson Porter Dahl had been born a few hours earlier, weighing 8 1/2 half pounds. Garry told us that as tears streamed down his face at the telephone station that the Nepalese attendant there looked concerned... Garry explanation that his tears were about a birth and were joyful may or may not have been understood, but he returned to us with the only cigars that he could find in Namche. He will certainly go outside the lodge tonight and light one up as a deserving grandfather should do.

Another report that Garry gave us was that his daughter said to him before he hung up, "now you can focus on that climb."

We will certainly be doing that, but we've got one proud granddaddy (as well as several very proud fathers) on this team... and we cannot imagine a better omen to star with than the healthy birth of little Jackson.