Featured Expedition: 2003 American Ski Everest Expedition
Dispatch 17

Copyright©Jim Gile American Ski Everest 2003

Dispatch 17: (Transcribed from satellite phone voice message)

American Ski Everest Expedition... May 2nd.

We are at ABC. We received our weather forecast this morning and the jet stream is dripping right over the Khumbu Everest region and it is expected to stay around or the next 3-5 days. The winds up on the ridge are reported to be to be over 100 mph. It will be interesting to see how many camps are still around once we get back up there. From ABC it looks really nasty up there!

Our North Col set up should be pretty well protected, But we are glad we don't have gear higher than that.... The good news is this type of weather has a way of [Connection lost]

So here we sit. We will sit this storm out. The first couple of winds storms we were at base camp. We have to be ready to move ASAP, in order to establish the high camps before we head down to rest at base camp before the summit push.

So we need 2-3 days. We are already to go when the mountain is ready we will head up there. Now is not the time. So while it would be nice to be sitting at base camp, we are OK. We have a "bomber camp" and we have a ton of supplies.

It is blue skys, but just very windy. We are just going to continue to acclimate. In fact, today Jeremie and I hauled skis up to the North Col headwall which is about 600 feet above ABC. It will be an easier day when we do move when the weather will let us. Steve would have joined us but he has a head cold, and is just hanging out.

As far as the skiing, it appears no one else has much interest in the skiing thing now. So it looks like that will fall on the shoulders of Jeremie, Steve and myself. It is a ton of extra work, but the way we look at it, if you can't do at least a little bit of it, climbing is just a good way to have pain and agony.

We are looking for some good turns and we will get them when the time is right. We do have an incredible light set up with our Stöckli skis. It does take an incredible effort to get skis up to 8000 meters  on this mountain. But it is worth it to us. We will try to get as absolutely high as possibly we can.

We are just hanging out here. It is a good camp, but not as comfortable as base camp. We do have a cook tent, we have a mess tent and each of us has our good North Face tents. We just have to wait out the wind in the tents. That is a part of climbing and sometimes it get old. Given the facts that this group about 12 trips into the Alaska range, mentally and physically we are prepared to handle it.

Dispatches