September 16, 2006 – Team Sits Tight at Base Camp

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Did I mention something about monsoon being over, ha no way!  Today on September 16 we had completely different weather from my blue bird day yesterday.  Here’s what happened.  I got up at about 2:30am and went into the Sherpa cook tent where the stove was already started.  It was snowing quite hard and as I sat and drank coffee with the boys we began to ponder whether or not we should go. It seemed like every time we thought it might lift enough that we could actually take our team through the icefall today, there would be a big rumble from an avalanche coming off the west shoulder or the Lo La or some place.  So we thought better of it and we told the team when we woke them up at 4:00am that we were on hold and would probably not go.  At 5:00am Da Sona and I decided definitely not to go.

We still had a good day here at base camp.  Sean Moore came in to visit us after being down valley for a few days.  He had a very nostalgic Scrabble match with Dave Hahn, his old Scrabble partner and I have to say that perhaps… [lost transmission]