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Hello, this is Eric Simonson calling from Advanced Base Camp at Mt. Everest on April 27th. We are all up here at ABC now, and by we, I mean the climbing team and all of our Sherpas. And everything is doing well except that, unfortunately, the weather is not cooperating particularly.

We were planning on moving up to the North Col today, but the winds are just howling up above on the mountain, and the plume is really whipping off the peak. And it doesn't look very good. So we've postponed our departure and are staying here at ABC for at least another day.

Our plan is that tomorrow, if things mellow out just a little bit, we're going to try to move up to Camp IV. And then our plan continues to be to push on to Camp V and finish establishing that campsite, and set up our tents, and put a couple more carries worth of equipment into that campsite in preparation for establishing Camp VI.

So, we are in kind of a holding pattern right now waiting for things to improve. Everybody's in good spirits and doing well. And everything's going pretty well. So not to worry, this is fairly normal for this time of the year. That's it for now. Talk to you later. Goodbye.

—Eric Simonson, Expedition Leader

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