EVEREST NORTH FACE SKI EXPEDITION 1997
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Monday, September 22, 1997
Sorry for the lack of communication. I had to take Martina down; she was not able to get rid of these constant headaches that were occurring every night. There were also some kind of abdominal problems going on with her that seemed to go away with a little bit of seperol. I left Bridwell in command up here, hoping he would communicate, and when I got up here and asked him how things were going with the communications with you guys, he just plain said he couldn't figure the thing out. Sorry about that. I really hate to leave people hanging. On the weather front, we've been getting a lot of bad weather recently. That's one of the reasons why I stayed down at base camp with Martina. There was no reason to come back up, no one was going anywhere. We had high winds, heavy snows; heavy enough to keep everyone off. And now it's kind of clear. The British group is exiting. It seems kind of funny, they listened to a report from the BBC stating that there was supposed to be bad weather for a few weeks and that was enough for them to leave. I would have to say, pretty un-British like. But it's not for me to say, right? Anyway, we're going to be doing some climbing and skiing around here, down low, because it's just cracking up top. I don't know how high the winds are blowing but definitely much higher than what any of us want to be hanging up there in. I'd say over a hundred or so just by the look of the snow getting blown around. The weather seems to be pretty nice at this moment although there are some really high clouds indicating high winds. So, time will tell. I think in about two-and-a-half weeks, weather dictating, we're going to take the shot at the summit. I don't see anything happening too much sooner just due to the fact that there's still a lot of snow up high. It's been keeping everyone down — along with the bad weather. And no camps have been established above the North Col, except for one camp at 7800 meters —camp II — which is hardly an established campsite. So we're all going to be punching away, working on that, trying to ford our way through. Maybe this wind will help us out a little bit and get some of the snow off the ridge because it's been waist-deep, chest-deep; really bad avalanche conditions. We don't really need to have someone else taken out by another one of those things. It's kind of a bad way to go. Anyway, no one has pulmonary edema, cerebral edema. If you guys got any rumor of that, it's false. Especially on this team; everyone's healthy. Martina's headaches have subsided and everything else seems to be fine. We're just going to sit around and do what we can with what we have in front of us and be a little bit patient here. Maybe the weather gods will come around in our favor and give us a little window to try and knock this thing off. Anyway, I hope everyone is safe and sound back there. I am definitely going to be here for a while. I'm not leaving this post, except up and down — skiing and climbing during the day. Other than that, if anything comes up unexpectedly I'll try to leave you a message as to what it is. We always have that happen around here. The reason for taking Martina out so fast was that she just wasn't getting better and before it got worse it was really important to get her down just as fast as possible. I hope everyone's good. Bye. On Monday evening, Craig reports: The British I just met with say that apparently about eight or nine of them are going to hang out here a bit longer to see what the weather is going to do and possibly give it another shot. They're not going to pack it in and leave so quickly like some of the others are. — Craig Calonica, Expedition Leader 
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