A Peaceful Spot In A Great Space | |
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When I look back on May 1st, I think about waking up early in the morning with my climbing partners, Dave and Andy and Jake and Conrad. We brewed up early in the morning and slowly made our way out of the tent. After leaving the tent, we plugged into the oxygen and had our start for the day of climbing. We spent most of the day climbing up to the Camp VI area just trying to keep up with Conrad and Jake who weren't even climbing with the oxygen as Dave and Andy and myself were. We made our way to the Camp VI area and started our search from there. From that point, we spread out into a grid pattern and searched for about two hours.
At that point I looked down and saw Conrad below waving up at us. Then, he came on the radio and explained that we needed to have some sort of a meeting. At that point we gathered together and made our way down to where Conrad was. When we got there, he had obviously found something that we were looking for. At this point we performed some high-altitude archeology on the body that we had found, that seemed pretty obvious to be George Mallory which was really quite amazing.
I think at this point we're still trying to process all that ourselves. But, it really was neat to be there with Mallory. It seemed like he was in a very peaceful spot and at peace himself. After that, we performed a high-altitude committal, buried the body in rock, and left Mallory in a very peaceful spot, in a great space, which seemed like a really good thing for him, left him in a nice space. It was pretty amazing to be there and do all this at 27,000 feet — something that I think none of us, and probably not a whole lot of people have experienced before.
At that point we made our descent back to the Camp V area and have since made our way back down to Advanced Base Camp here. It's nice to be back down, we had a great day up there. I couldn't have been up there with a better group of people, and it's nice to be back here and see Eric and continuing on with the expedition. So I sure do appreciate all the work you guys have done for us and I hope everyone that's looking on the Mountain Zone web site is enjoying what we're putting out there. Things are going really well. Thanks, bye.
—Tap Richards, Climber
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The Expedition Leader and High Altitude Search Team's Dispatches on Finding Mallory:
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