McLean

Anker

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And with a sort of a mixture of feeling good, feeling bad, feeling rough, but everybody's here and everybody's got a pulse, which is a good sign...[laughs]. Actually, it's great. We had a huge day; we camped at about 13,000...13.5 or so, yesterday. And came all the way up to about 17, camped about 17,200ft. So, it's a huge day. Actually, a little bigger than was really sort of desirable, but that's kind of the way that it worked out with the yak drivers and just circumstantial.

So, we're all fine and we actually moved well on beyond the established Base Camp or what would have normally have been our Advanced Base Camp, which is really nice. And so, it saved us a lot of backpacking and actually brought us a fair bit of time on the mountain. So, it's really exciting; it's great to be here. It's actually a nice gibbous moon here tonight and probably be full in another week. It's kind of clouded over now, but it's been coming and going and it's been absolutely spectacular alpine weather as you get these, you know, these sort of evanescent little holes in the clouds and these amazing peaks, you know, offer themselves and we definitely suck it up spiritually. It's just an amazing place. Had a little snowfall right when we got here that just added a real nice kind of mountain feel to it.

And just kind of having a really, really wonderful time with our yak drivers. Conrad and I had a bunch of Dalai Lama postcards and we doled them all out tonight and it's like kids in a candy shop. Actually, that's a bad description because it's more serious than that to them. Especially like, Buddhists being given something very precious to them. And just beautiful, beautiful evening here shared with these yak drivers. They're going to spend the night here tonight and then bolt, in the morning, back to Nyalam. About half of our gear came with us, we're not exactly traveling light here. But, we needed to get some more yaks together, so our skis will come up in the next couple-three days, which is not a problem. We're just all going to sort of hang out here and nurse headaches and hydrate and just buff out Base Camp. And then, you know, then probably think about skiing three to four days from now.

But things look really good; the trip is really coming together. I just can't imagine being here with a better group of people. There's just such a great, positive energy here and it's just such a low key. And this feels like, to me, one of the best trips with friends that I've taken in a long time — that's just sort of what this trip is all about. People really caring about each other and just really sharing their ebullient energy. It's just a really wonderful trip for me. So, I'll pass you over to Conrad and we're really enjoying doing this. We're actually sort of a little bit diligent here on images. We've been on the road; it's a bit hard to set up each night. So tomorrow, though, we're getting charged up and send you...we'll give you the double whammy on images and lots of emails. All the best man, ciao.

Greetings folks, we're in for a bit of a treat. We came up from 13 to 17 today and for the most part it was in the clouds. And hopefully it will be clear in the morning and that means, it's sort of like, we'll see all of these wonderful mountains, much akin to kids opening up Christmas presents on Christmas morning — you don't know what there is, but it should be beautiful. So, thanks again to all of you folks there and have a great day. Ciao, ciao.

— Andrew McLean and Conrad Anker, MountainZone.com Correspondents

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