Simonson

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Hello Mountain Zone, this is Eric Simonson calling from Advanced Base Camp. Everything's going well here on Cho Oyu. Let me bring you up to date on what's happened in the last couple days.

Yesterday, our entire team climbed to Camp I, including our climbing members and all of our Sherpas. Our Sherpas, in addition, climbed to Camp I again today and climbed to Camp I the day before yesterday. So, as of right now, we have had three Sherpa-carries to Camp I and one member-carry to Camp I.

The route to Camp I takes us several miles up the glacier on rubble and rock and bare ice, and then climbs sharply up a long, steep scree and rocky ridge to the site of Camp I, which is on snow. We now have four tents up there, and tomorrow morning all of the climbers will be moving up to spend the night at Camp I, which is about 20,600 feet, for acclimatization. Tomorrow, the Sherpas are going to take a rest day down here at ABC. And then when we come back down the next day, the Sherpas will move up to Camp I and start working on putting in the route to Camp II.

Everything's going well, but the weather has not been very good the last few days. It's been as if we've been in a cloud; it's been snowing and spitting rain on us. We've heard a lot of avalanches crashing down from the peaks on either side of us. Our climbing route is safe, but there's a lot going on in the mountains and we're certainly looking forward to the monsoon coming to an end.

Otherwise, though, the team is doing well and our Sherpas have been doing an incredible job. And we're well ahead of everyone else on the mountain. There are now 10 expeditions here at ABC, including ours. That includes several groups from Europe and other parts of the world. I'll give you a rundown on them later when we get it totally figured out on who everybody is. Suffice to say for right now nobody else, though, has got any tents up at Camp I. So we're probably close to five days ahead of everybody else on the mountain. And we were the first team up here at ABC.

Well, that's about it for now. Spirits are high and everyone is doing well; becoming well acclimatized, and we've been eating well, and nobody's sick, everybody's healthy. So, so far, so good. Okey-doke, we're going to be heading up to Camp I tomorrow, spending a night, and then we'll be back down the next day, and we'll give you a lowdown on how that went.

This is Eric Simonson signing off, bye-bye.

— Eric Simonson, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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