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Eric Simonson with an update on how our climb's going. Yesterday on the 16th, our climbing team made it into Camp VI, and then Andy and Thom descended and did some more searching of a couple of sites that we thought were particularly promising using the metal detector. And they got back down to Camp V late last night after dark. After, again, exploring several very interesting sites.

The summit climbers got up at midnight and started climbing at a little after two o'clock this morning. Right now, it's about 6:30 in the morning here, and we've been in radio contact with them. They forged their way up through the Yellow Band [and] despite some of the fresh snow, were able to gain the Northeast Ridge.

Unfortunately, the weather right now is a little bit on the funky side. There's a lenticular over the summit, but there's not much wind, so the team's going to push on. They're going to call us in probably the next hour or so when they get to the First Step and let us know how it's going.

Right now they're on the ridge crest over 28,000' heading for the First Step, and hopefully as the sun comes up and as the day warms up, it'll get a little bit nicer. They said on the radio that right now it was pretty darn cold up there. It sounded like the trip up through the Yellow Band was pretty strenuous with all the fresh snow. So that's the story right now from ABC, and we'll have some more news from you here as soon as we get it. Okay, talk to you later.

—Eric Simonson, Expedition Leader

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