Dispatch#29 January 20th, 2002.  Aconcagua Base Camp, Argentina. Team Canusa Hi this is Ellie Henke calling in from Aconcagua Base Camp where we apologize for the slight delay in getting messages through.  We've had a little excitement here in Base Camp trying to get the Sat Phone recharged.  Despite a couple of burned out wires from Matt and some tinkering around from Willi, we finally managed to get the phone back charged back up again.  So we're now back in business. So with that, it's January 20th, and Team Canusa with Allen and Matt are currently up at Camp III at 19,200 feet.  And we've all been counting, today is our seventh day in a row of afternoon snow, so the troops have definitely been getting early morning starts and they moved up to Camp III yesterday, January 19th and managed to snag a few camp sites.  The mountain's pretty busy right now, there are about thirty or forty people moving up at about the same time as Team Canusa, so they're having to hustle right up there to get tent spots.  But it sounds like they made it in good shape and have been hunkering down and trying to wait out the bad weather.  They're planning on taking another rest day tomorrow, just hoping things will settle down a little bit. Nobody has gotten to the summit in about the last three or four days, so they're hoping that real soon somebody will bash through the snow and get a trail going up there.  In the meantime everybody is in good spirits, good health and eating well at 19.2.

Here are a few special personal messages from the folks:

David says that Fancy(?) is with him every step of the way.
Jorma wishes his friends and family well, back home.
Christine would like to wish Ren all the best for her first few days back in college.  She says the cats(?) are acclimatizing well, and she wishes well to her news team back in Boston.
And from Allen, he assures Laura that he is taking his Glucosamine.

So that's the news from Aconcagua Base Camp and Team Canusa.  We should be hearing from Willi's team very shortly, as soon as I pass the phone to him.