Simonson

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ABC

Hello, Mountain Zone. This is Eric Simonson calling from 18,400 feet at Advanced Base Camp on Cho Oyu. The whole team arrived here this afternoon safe and sound, and everyone is doing well. We were accompanied by our 31 yaks and 10 yak drivers and also four of our Sherpas.

Last night we camped halfway, at about 17,300 feet, in a beautiful grassy meadow, which made those of us who have been to McKinley and camped at about that same elevation at High Camp, realize how totally different this environment is.

Today the route got more rugged. We followed the lateral moraine of the Gyabrag Glacier nearly to Nangpa La Pass. At which point we turned to the east up a side glacier which took us up to Advanced Base Camp, again following the lateral moraine up to the campsite.

Four of our Sherpas had arrived here a couple of days ago with our first yak train, and they had built a beautiful camp. We have a large dining tent and also a kitchen tent. We, this afternoon, set up our communications tent where I'm calling you from now. We have five solar panels powering a 12-volt system, and we're running from that three inverters, which are giving us 110 volt AC power. And we're able to charge our laptop computer and our phone and also charge our radios.

Everything's going well and tomorrow we hope to have our puja. I hope to be able to send some photos and more information on the climb up to this point.

That's about it for now. Thanks and goodbye.

— Eric Simonson, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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