Bolivia Expedition Dispatch

June 20, 2008 – Summit on Cerro Austria!

It is about 2:24 pm and I am calling you from the summit of Cerro Austria, 17,550 feet above sea level. It is beautiful up here today. I am looking far below, 2,000 feet down at our Berg Adventures base camp. Keith, Simon and rest of the Berg Adventures base staff are down there now. Keith decided this morning to stay down and rest at base camp, which is fine, as there is still a lot of climbing left.

We all climbed for a few hours through a beautiful Col at 16,900 feet at which point Roy and Rob and Karen decided to descend down to join Keith at base camp with Juancho our BAI Guide.

Right now, we are at the summit of Cerro Austria; Adam, Yael, Stacey, Paul, Bonnie, Keith, Armando, Leila and I and one of our guides Osvaldo are feeling like we are on top of the world here in the Andes. It has been a great climb, beautiful day; the entire team did very well. This is Armando’s personal altitude record he has never climbed this high before in his life and he is looking great.

This is our report from the top of our first big climb.