Featured Expedition: 2003 American Ski Everest Expedition
Dispatch 18

Copyright©Jim Gile American Ski Everest 2003

Dispatch 18: (Transcribed from satellite phone voice message)

American Ski Everest Expedition... May 4th.

We are at still at ABC, and thank God for it! The storm forecast has come though and like never before, according to the people who has been at ABC on the North side of Everest. If we would have not been here at ABC, our "ABC" would probably not still be here at this time.

There is a hand full of other camps have been blown to "bits"! 2 Days ago the winds started by blowing 60-70 mph down the glacier. We secured down our camp according. Then late Saturday, the winds started up the glacier. The same exercise and velocity as before, but in the other direction. Just bizarre.

We have used all of our climbing ropes, webbing, shoe strings, everything to secure our tents. We have build rock walls, tied all our gear down. So far it has paid off. Others are not so lucky. A team next to us lost all their entire base; gear, jackets, packs, everything; it was just blown everywhere!

An Italian team doe not appear to have lost much gear, but their base tents are non-existent.

Up higher there is all kinds of busy bodies, working to try to keep what they have intact. It is not that dangerous at this point, but terribly unnerving. It is a consistent battle to keep the base tents together and taped.

The wind gusts we are experiencing are bizarre winds shears, that come down on the tops of the tents, straight down, like someone is putting their hand on the top of the tent and pushing down.

As far as out sleeping tents, we have NORTH FACE V 25's and 45's and Himalayan Hotels. They are "totally bomber", thank goodness.

We noticed a couple of tents got blown down the North Col. We can just hope those were not ours. We do have a couple of North Face V 45 tents up there with some of our gear and stuff. You can see some tents just hanging out there in nowhere. Obviously, someone lost some gear and stuff. Hopefully, all is well up there for us.

Here we sit. We will be here and we will be ready to go when this moves out of here. Apparently, this is very usual, high winds with blue skies; it is just the wind.

We are just glad we are here to make sure everything has been kept intact. Mike

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