Simonson

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Hello, this is Eric Simonson calling from ABC [Advanced Base Camp] on Cho Oyu with an update on our progress. I have some good news and I have some bad news.

The good news is that all of our Sherpas made it successfully up to Camp III yesterday and hauled some tents and oxygen and fixed ropes up to there. They were joined in their trip to Camp III by Sherpas from the other three commercial groups on the mountain, and together we had 13 Sherpas breaking the trail into Camp III.

The bad news is that the snow is very deep and, above Camp III, looks to be even deeper. They encountered waist-deep snow along the way in several places and the snow is consistently knee- to thigh-deep, which led them to turn around at Camp III after they had dropped the loads and not attempt to go any further fixing rope above Camp III.

This was fine with me. Because as we had made absolutely clear to them before they left, safety was our number one concern. And while the route up to Camp III is reasonably safe and not too steep, above Camp III it starts getting quite steep and considerably more hazardous. So the Sherpas returned back down here late yesterday and the route to Camp III is in, but the conditions up high on the mountain are still pretty bad and the snow is very deep. To make matters worse, last night we had more snowfall and the word on the radio this morning from Camp II — from one of the other groups that's up there that we were talking to — was that over a foot of fresh snow fell last night, which only adds to our concern.

Furthermore, we got a weather forecast today for the next five days which continues to predict snow falling every day for the next five days. So we're a little discouraged at this point, since it doesn't sound like the conditions are improving very quickly. We had hoped that the weather was starting to get better there a few days ago. But it seems like we're back into the same pattern now of snow almost every day.

So for the time being we're all back down here at ABC. Everybody's safe and sound. We have all of our route in — and camps, all the way to Camp III, which is our High Camp at 24,500ft — and everything's good, but the weather gods are not cooperating. So we continue to wait and we'll see what happens and we'll certainly keep you posted. That's it for right now. This is Eric Simonson at Advanced Base Camp on Cho Oyu, signing off. Good-bye.

— Eric Simonson, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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