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September 23 - Exploring above Camp 1
It’s early evening – actually it’s gotten dark already, but it’s still early evening – on the 23rd of September. I’m calling you from Camp 1 at 19, 600 feet in the Western Cwm. It’s still snowing. An interesting situation – the weather has changed. I talked with Ang Temba at Base Camp, and down valley from Base Camp it’s more clear now. They’ve had some unsettled weather at Base Camp. But higher on the mountain, we’ve had a steady, light snow throughout the day, probably only about four inches accumulation, no wind. But still continuing to snow.
Maegan, Garry, David and myself did move up towards Camp 2 earlier today. When you leave Camp 1 for Camp 2, you still have to wind your way through a series of very large crevasses as you leave the Icefall and head up the Western Cwm. The Khumbu Icefall does not have an abrupt, definite ending. It sort of eases off and you still cross giant crevasses as you move up into the more gentle and flat part of the Western Cwm. That’s what we did today. We got through the big crevasses to about 20,000 feet or so and lost our visibility and didn’t like the prospect of continuing on to Camp 2. So we came back to camp.
We’re settling down now, hoping it doesn’t snow too much through the night because we’d like to see more loads carried from Base Camp. And actually, the four of us will probably return to Base Camp tomorrow – if there’s not much snow accumulation that we’re worried about avalanches and it doesn’t seem safe. |
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Listen to Audio of Wally's Call (.wav)
Maegan skied up, except for the ladder crossing and a couple of the steep pitches coming out of the crevasses. She decided to bring her skis back down, even though she might have cached them. The skier in her just feels good about keeping the skis with her at all times, I think.
