Berg Adventures 2013 Everest Expedition Dispatch
May 12, 2013 – The Team in Position at Camp II
I just got off the radio talking to camp II; Danuru informed me that Daniel, Todd and Steve are resting well in their tents there and the guys are back on the mountain, their camp II.
We weren’t sure what was going to happen this morning. I woke up at 1:45 AM and it was snowing. After a few minutes I got out of the tent and I hollered over to the guys and we kind of acknowledged that we were surprised a couple or 3 inches of new snow while we were sleeping and it was coming down really quite steadily when we woke up. So we decided to get up and drink coffee on it; I got on the radio with some of the other teams and we discussed snowfall and we thought what happened today, and we were just waiting.
Our chorten is covered with fresh snow
Now it did get clear, by 3:15, 3:30, there were stars overhead. It didn’t seem like the winds were too high and by 5 am, our climbers and all of our Sherpas started to climb through the Icefall. 5 am is not quite the early start we like to get but it is plenty early, we just needed to make sure that is going to work. You can see from the photo that it was beautiful as the guys walked up to the chorten and the flames were going. The sky was already lightened, we had clouds over head still, but it turned out it was a good call.
I can tell the guys were really tired from their ascent back to camp II today but they are in position, that’s the main thing. We can watch the weather report; we like what we are seeing on May 16th as well as May 17th, 18th and perhaps beyond. With the guys in position we can make the call when they feel rested and the weather looks good, they can move higher towards camp III and the South Col for their summit attempt. Congratulations everyone!
