CLICK TO HEAR THE CALL:

Hello, Eric Simonson at Advanced Base Camp on May 14th with an update on what's happening at Mt. Everest. Boy, things sure took a turn after we spoke yesterday. Our group was headed to Camp V. Meanwhile, a lenticular formed on the summit and rapidly enveloped the whole top of the mountain and by the time they got up to Camp V, in the later afternoon, it was snowing and blowing, simultaneously. Our Sherpas pulled into the Col, again, to snow and wind and everybody hunkered down.

During the night it snowed and blowed hard here. We followed up with updates on our weather forecast out of London, which indicated that the trough that was supposed to move through had turned into a very significant low pressure. There was a lot of moisture and precipitation associated with the winds.

We're hoping that that's going to blow through today; right now everybody is hunkered down. We've been on the radio every hour to the team at Camp V at 25,600'. They say they are experiencing hurricane winds. Fortunately, our Trango tents are tied down with nets, and everybody's strong, and we have lots of fuel and oxygen; so we're doing really well. We're a little bit concerned. There was another party or two that headed up to V yesterday, and we don't know where they are, whether they're even still attached to the side of the mountain.

Back down at the North Col, our camp's really secure. Again, we have our Mountain Hardwear tents secured with nets and real strong we put in there. So, no problems, everybody is just hunkered down and hoping this thing'll blow itself out in the next few hours and that tomorrow we can pull the trigger on the summit bids.

As a side note, we heard listening to the radio, that a couple of groups from the south side made the summit yesterday and that right now they are pinned on the South Col unable to move, so sounds like everybody's getting hammered right now.

That's about it. Hoping for good weather. And maybe in a day or two we can ring the bell. Okay, talk to you later. Bye.

—Eric Simonson, Expedition Leader

DISPATCHES