Dispatch 12: May 03, Marina Ershova: Hello, Today I have descended from the North Col with Oleg Nasedkin. It is impossible strong wind there! A part of the tents was destroyed of flown away! Now we are at BC and all is OK. Maybe tomorrow we will go to the nearest village for rest.

May 03, Tom Masterson: A (very) windy day at the top of the world. Already at 8:00 a.m., the plume blowing from the top of Everest looked ferocious, in the 200 km/hr range. Tents at base camp were struggling to stay upright, and rumor has it that all sites above ABC have been evacuated. We have no accurate forecast on how long the winds will continue, but quite possibly for the next several days. To date, there have been no days with reasonable summit opportunities from this side. Two folks from our camp joined the Russian group from Moscow to drive out 50 km or so (& 1000 m lower) for a couple days until the weather improves. Usually the weather changes for the better by ~1 May. All the rest of us have blown back into base camp and are trying to hold on. There are a few small settlements of Tibetans along the 100 km Everest Base Camp road, now also strongly infiltrated with Chinese. The closest one is temporary, just outside the rope which defines the Park boundary, beside a concrete blockhouse with an English sign informing passersby that they will be fined US$200 if they walk past without the correct permissions. It is possible to buy a few goods there at rather inflated prices, and Nepalis & Tibetans working for local camps seem to have friends they like to visit just outside the "gate". Since last Sunday (27 April), personal communications with the rest of the world have been severely curtailed as the Chinese have closed all borders to foreigners (cause: SARS - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). A delegation coming to visit the British (Navy) expedition barely made it across the border (with Nepal) at Zhang Mu with minutes to spare (and still more formalities to be completed the next morning). Foreigners are still allowed to leave China, but it is unclear what will happen to those of us who have plane tickets which are currently booked through places like Hong Kong.  Politics have also entered summit bids as the Chinese have reserved the 12th of May for their very highly publicized live TV summit coverage, and have informed other groups that they are not to summit on that day. Even the very austere base camp landscape is slowly changing as April yielded to May. Even though we are at only 30 deg N, the days have gotten noticeably longer. Our camp lies on the east side of the Rongbuk glacial moraine. Sunrise on this side is an hour later than on the other side, and sunset an hour later as well. On the west side, there are long strips of residual snow and ice. In the last 2 weeks these strips have become a river as the meter-thick ice has collapsed and water from higher up the moraine has melted. In the next few days, my morning base camp walk up into the sunshine will no longer be possible as there is no bridge across.