Featured Expedition: 2003 American Ski Everest Expedition
Dispatch

Copyright©Jim Gile American Ski Everest 2003

Dispatch 22: American Ski Everest Expedition... (Transcribed from a satellite phone voice message)

Note Mike's last few phones calls were combined into the last 2 dispatches. Either dispatch 21 is lost in cyberspace or we combined it with another... but anyway, to the News!

May 8th. Last night from 3AM to 8:30 AM [this would be on the 8th in Tibet] the winds finally stopped, there was no plume coming from the Summit, and it looked like a good day to head for the summit. It was a super day until about 10AM, then the wind return, and the wind from Everest looked like an erupting volcano. We are just in this stormy, [inaudible], windy period and we will simply have to wait until this gets over.

Roger and I did get out of base camp to see what was going on with other teams and how things have changed. Brice's Team did mange to get up to the North Col, and while they did lose a couple of tents, it was not as bad as they expected. They said the area where our tents were, was pretty much intact. Our gear is still up there and that is good news! Also for Brice, they did not lose much gear, and they are fine. [inaudible]. They [Brice's teams] want to get going. They are waiting for the right time to get going. [inaudible]

The Chinese are also attempting to do a live broadcast to the summit [the Chinese of course were the first to do so several years ago, on the Japanese-Chinese-Nepalese expedition] They invited us over to be at their opening celebration. That will air on May 11th; the show will be on the 50th Anniversity of Everest thing. So if you can get CCTV on your TV, that will be interesting. Not sure how your Chinese is. But if it is good, it might be interesting.

We then went to Bass's expedition [inaudible] and we were greeted by the Indian expedition [inaudible] with the communication gap between us and the India climbers it is hard to make out exactly what was going on. A huge Japanese expedition has left the mountain early this morning. Their ABC was decimated. So they have headed back to Japan. The Chinese were re-supplied and are waiting to get going... They have 12 climbers and they want 3 of those guys to Summit. So they are excited on that. No further word on the Korean expedition. I think when people get back up to ABC they will [inaudible].

As far as our team, Steve and Jim have bad colds, it going around base camp. We are just hanging out trying to get healthy and rested. We are [inaudible].

[inaudible]

We are trying to exercise a great deal of patience until the mountain lets us or does not let us climb. They want to get healthy. We can wait another 3-4 weeks to give this thing everything possible. So that is it from the North side of Everest. Mike

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