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We spent the morning doing some filming up at the Khunde Clinic where Jim Litch and his fiancée, Rachel, are in residence as the doctors for the next two years. Jim is a very experienced mountaineer, and has indeed climbed Mount Everest, and it was great to be able to meet with him again and catch up with all sorts of climbing and medical rescues. And he very graciously allowed us to do some filming, and even more graciously, volunteered Charles to go inside the gamow bag for a demonstration. I guess Charles caught the shorter straw here. Charles was duly taken down from 12,000 feet to 6,000 feet, and then decompressed again. He seemed to be just as irascible afterwards as before, so were not sure how good these portable high altitude chambers are. At any rate, they don't seem to work very well on him!

We then swung up through Pangboche. It was getting late so we did not stop today for a puja. That has been scheduled for tomorrow morning, and we'll head up the hill to Pangboche at about 7am and then we'll go visit the monastery, or ghompa, there and we'll do some more filming with the NBC crew.

Everybody is well and healthy, and we are keeping the comm-link here going in somewhat cramped conditions. The room Pete, Bill, and myself are in is about six foot by six foot. It is unilluminated apart from the headlamp. Peter's bashing away emails on the laptop balanced on a bed. Bill is holding the Sat-phone out of the window so we can get a signal. And Charles is busy doing his back in, bent over the luggage trying to make the handset call. So, to give you some idea of what the conditions are like, these will improve tomorrow 'cause we are heading into Dingboche after we've done our Pangboche run, and we'll be there for a couple of days, and it will be a somewhat more civilized environment in which to, I hope, send back one or two digital images and a lengthier and fuller dispatch.

That's it. Stay tuned. We're having a good time here, making good progress to Base Camp, and we look forward to staying in touch. This is Charles Corfield, Deboche, signing off.

—Charles Corfield, Climber

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