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Expedition Dispatches
Satellite phone updates from the 1998 American Everest Expedition
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Wally Berg
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Rinpoche Out of Town
Saturday, April 4, 1998 — Thyangboche (12,680')
 | Hear Wally Berg's call from Thyangboche
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Satellite phones for Everest cybercasts provided by MVS/USA
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Good Morning Mountain Zone, this is Wally Berg calling you from 12,500 feet, Thyangboche monastery. We had a wonderful hike up here yesterday. Since we've been around we have been in the clouds basically and certainly this morning. In the early morning hours at Thyangboche monastery, there is a misty, I'd have to say, sort of gloomy, cruel atmosphere.
We'll be moving on today. We are not going to do anything at the monastery. Probably the main reason being the big focus here is that the Rinpoche has been in Kathmandu and is scheduled to return at 9am on a helicopter this morning. He almost certainly will not do that given the cloud cover. We're going to move along to the Pangboche monastery, the Dolpa at Pangboche wants to do our Puja and there we'll be with a Lama who works at that smaller Pangboche monastery. I'll give you the story on that probably later this afternoon and we will try to obtain some images to get to you.
The Pyangboche monastery is one that is really special to us. It is actually the oldest monastery in the Khumbu. Most people feel that it is at least 350-400 years old; Sherpas actually feel that it is a lot older than that. Many of our climbing Sherpas are from the village of Pangboche so it is kind of a special place to us. We'll move on and have some lunch after that. We will end our day, if things go well, at Pheriche, where we will be for sometime acclimatizing to 14,000 foot elevation.
— Wally Berg, Expedition Leader
