|
Manaslu 2003 featuring Dan Mazur
|
|
|
Manaslu, at 8163 meters, is the eighth highest
peak in the world. It is located in the
west-central part of Nepal, and our team will
climb it by the original route. We will be
climbing during the "spring" or " pre-monsoon"
season, when the hazards of weather and snow and
avalanche are traditionally at their lowest. Dan
Mazur Jeff
Justman will be co-leading this expedition, his
reports are here. |
Dispatch Four 4/27/2003: After another small storm
last night, this morning brought well-appreciated
sunshine (great for doing laundry and teaching Sherpas
to ski). However, at the moment it looks like another
big storm is moving in from Tibet. The other part of
our team, which arrived two weeks before us has been
here longer than any of the teams on the Mt. and are
up at Camp 2 waiting to move up to High Camp and then
hopefully for a summit bid. Arnold Coster is climbing
on that team, and if he summits he will be the first
Dutch national to summit Manaslu. There is also a full
Dutch team here trying to put the first Dutchman on
the summit -it's a race! Dan Mazur (aka Col. Kurtz)
and the rest of us on his team have returned from
acclimating at Camp 2. We're now resting in Base Camp
(conversations here range from how strong Anatoli
Boukreev was, to credit card debt). In a couple days,
weather permitting, we will be climbing back up the
Mt. Soon all our training, logistics and sacrifices
will be coming down to a few days of hard climbing.
~Clay Clarke
Update (same day):
We four members just came back down to the basecamp,
after spending 2 nights in the deposit camp at 6500
meters. The four members are:
Clay
Clarke, Taylor Gordon, Dan Mazur, and Bill Stephenson
We
were climbing with two very strong Sherpas:
Lakpa
Sherpa and Shera Sherpa
We
climbed up to the place were camp 2 has now been
established, at 6800 metres and met the other team
members there:
Arnold
Coster
Scott
Darsney (he just came down today and is planning to
join our group of four mentioned above) Shane Edmonds,
Bruce Gierszal, Jeff Justman, Will Seelye. They are
being joined by these four very strong Sherpas: Dorje
Tamang, Galu Sherpa, Lakpa Sherpa, and Tenzing Sherpa.
Our various Manaslu teams are starting to work
together more closely: The Polish team has donated a
few hundred meters of rope, which our Sherpas have
been fixing. The Dutch team gave several hundred
meters of rope and fixed some sections. The Slovenian
Team Sherpas have been working together with ours to
fix the upper mountain and are working toward camp 3.
We just sent up another load of rope, bamboo, snow
pickets, food, and epigas for the team on the upper
mountain.
All
we need now is some good weather! Thanks
EverestNews.com, from all of us at SummitClimb.com
 Dispatches
|
