Daily Dispatches [CLICK FOR INDEX] Pete Athans Thousand Feet of Gain
 Wed, April 21, 1999 — Camp III (23,500'; 7100m)
CLICK TO HEAR THE CALL: 
Hi, this is Pete Athans, 23,500' on the West Face of Lhotse. Hi Mountain Zone, I hope you're all doing well. It's the 21st of April. It's almost six o'clock. I just wanted to send out a dispatch from high up here at Camp III.

Camp III It's been a beautiful day, and we all got up here no later than about 3:30. Bill got up here I think about two hours ahead of that. And the rest of us fellows, Jeff, Kelly, myself, are all enjoying a beautiful afternoon here, and it's nice to feel we're actually up high on the mountain looking over the top of Pumori here and looking over at the top of Nuptse, which we've been checking out for the last couple days.

Bill and I went over to Nuptse yesterday, and we were kind of scouting out the line for our ascent up Nuptse, which we hope to do once we're concluded with Everest here. And we're just trying to figure out exactly what the summit is. And from 23,500 feet here, we actually think we know where that is.

Nuptse peak That route was first done in 1977 by Doug Scott and party. And Bill and I were just kind of marveling about the fact that by walking just a couple of hours and carrying about a thousand feet of gain above Camp II on Everest, we were able to get over to a place that no one had been to in more than 20 years. So it was really quite a unique moment.

And we'll be sharing a lot more with you as time goes on. We'll be dropping back down to Base Camp. Thanks very much for being with us tonight, and we'll be talking with you all soon. Ciao.

—Pete Athans, Expedition Leader

DISPATCHES