November 15 - Successful Summit of Lobuche Peak

Listen to Audio of Wally's Call (.wav)

It’s a beautiful sunny morning, the morning of November 15th and I’m calling you from 17,000 ft (5181m) at what we call the lake camp or it may be referred to as advanced base camp on Lobuche.  We just finished a relaxing breakfast in the sun and the group is heading down hill.

I can report that this is a very satisfied group on the 15th of November, 2004 because yesterday morning all of us, Joe, Don, Jeff, Jennifer, Maegan, Grant, Dasona, Ang Temba and I were on the summit of Lobuche Peak at 20,000 ft (6095m).  It was a magnificent day, absolutely clear and a very satisfying and esthetic climb, quite challenging with a beautiful steep, exposed snow climb.

On the top it was perfectly still and we had magnificent views of Pumori, Changtse or the North Summit of Everest, the Lho La, Everest of course, Lhotse, Nuptse, our summit Ama Dablam and the other great peaks of the Khumbu, really a beautiful, beautiful day.

The group was really tired when they got back last night but this is a group that Grant and I were talking seems to recover, bounce back well.  Even before we went to bed last night people were showing signs of recuperating and this morning everybody looks great.

We’ve been six nights above 14,000 ft (4267m) and of course we climbed to 20,000 ft.  Now we are returning down to the comforts of our home base in Pangboche, Ang Temba’s house and we’ll be down there at 13,000 ft (3962m) tonight.  And if you are wondering there are still a lot of other things going on with this team.  Nima Tashi reports to us on the radio every day and he has already made trips to camp I and camp II on Ama Dablam to stock it with tents and other equipment that we’ll be using in a few days when we move up that route.

Things are looking great, we’re happy to be moving downhill feeling strong, acclimatized; working well as a team and everybody is very healthy.