Burleson

Click to hear Todd Burleson's audio dispatch recorded over sat-phone.
From Burleson's Satellite Call:
Hi, this is Todd calling The Mountain Zone. It's May 14th at about 8 or 8:30pm. Had another weather forecast today. Unfortunately, it's not very good. It's continuing high winds. It shows that there is a small drop in the winds for just a small period like a day or so and not enough time for us to go up. Looks like through the 20th we're looking still at very high winds. So we're kind of uncertain what to do at this point. We're just going to sit still and rest and hopefully get a break in the weather. It's a very unusual, windy spell here for the last literally 15 to 20 days.

Everything in Base Camp is good. Everybody is feeling well. Our spirits are still high and we hope to get to the summit definitely before the end of May. Things are pretty quiet. People doing a lot of reading; Sherpa doing a lot of gambling. But basically everybody is in pretty good spirits.

No news from the north side. We don't know what's going on over there. Hopefully they're all resting and recouping and pulling themselves together.

The Ice Fall still seems to be in good shape. A few people go up and down. Looks like John Tinker's group has gone up -- I'm not quite sure why. A little out of desperation because there's simply nothing else to do, but I think they're going to go up and have to sit and face some heavy winds in Camp II for a while.

We had a pretty high wind yesterday, or last night, in Camp II. Three Sherpa are staying up there -- we lost the fly, which is the cover, of one of our cook-tents, but it's been repaired and everything is in place.

We have clear, sunny days down here. It's just blowing like mad up top. So hopefully we'll get a change in the weather and get a chance for the summit. We'll keep in touch and hope everyone is well at The Mountain Zone.

Hope everyone is well there. Bye.

-- Todd Burleson, Expedition Leader