Burleson

Click to hear Todd Burleson's audio dispatch recorded over sat-phone.
From Burleson's Satellite Call:
Hey Mountain Zone, this is Todd, and I'm at Base Camp. I got here last night. We were on our way up to three, and I got hit pretty hard by a virus, so I descended back down to Base Camp where I'm resting right now. Doing well -- I went to see the Canadian doctor today, and he checked me out. He said I was in extremely good health but just had a virus up around my head and my throat and stuff. I do feel better right now.

Clouds descend over the Western Cwm

Charles and Wally are in Camp III [23,500']. They arrived about an hour and a half ago. They both seem to be doing very well, and we passed along the word on a happy birthday to Charles today.

Leslie and Eric and Greg are still pushing up to three. It's getting late in the day -- not moving real fast, but they should be there in the next half hour or so. That'll be a hard day for Leslie.

David Breashears and Pete Athans headed off for their summit bid today, so they left for Camp II today. And it looks like Guy Cotter and his group, which includes Ed Viesturs, have headed up to Camp II, so I think they're on their way to the summit.

The Malaysians are supposed to leave tomorrow, and they have got some huge group. They've want to put like 23 people up top including sherpa, camera crew and all this. So that should be a very interesting expedition, and we'll have to see how that goes. And I was visiting with the Canadians today, and they wanted to leave tomorrow also, but I think they'll postpone because I don't think everybody wants to summit on the same day. Especially if you get that huge group of the Malaysians up there at the same time -- I think you might find that it would be better if you chose another day. So they're going a couple days later, and everybody else is waiting for the weather.

I will not be going to Camp III this year so that will be an interesting aspect of this climb. [For acclimatization, Burleson and his team usually spend a night at Camp III before attempting the summit.] I don't really feel it's necessary for me to got to Camp III before I go to the summit. It doesn't hurt, for sure, it's a good thing to do. I have to deal with this virus, and the first time I went up I felt very, very strong, and this time I could tell something was funny with me so I decided to descend. Hopefully I'll get over it within the next few days, and in the next seven or eight days we'll be ready to launch our summit attempt. We'll get our guys back down -- they're coming back to two tomorrow, then base the next day. Then we'll have a long rest and figure out what we're going to do from there.

Most of the sherpa are down here resting. There're four or five up there assisting with the move to Camp III today. But all the sherpa team looks good; everything looks good here, and things are going to move fast in the next five or six days, so stay tuned to find out the latest on what's going on because a lot of teams will be summiting. There are still about 8 or nine teams here yet to summit the mountain, and that's not including Lhotse. So, it's getting that time of year again.

High winds blow plumes of snow over the Nuptse Ridge.

The weather looks good. The winds have been high up top, and some of the forecasts we've been getting have shown high winds, so a little late won't hurt anybody. I think a lot of these teams that left early, what their goal is, is to hopefully in the next day or two they'll see a three or four day forecast that shows diminishing winds, and they'll be right in position. Because, as you remember, we have to pick our date as much as five days in advance from leaving Base Camp. So, we get a five-day forecast, we start to see diminishing winds, we move to two, and kind of hang there until it looks like a good time to move up.

Hope everybody there is well, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye.

-- Todd Burleson, Expedition Leader