Rob DesLauriers  John Falkiner  Frederik Jacobi  Kit Katzenbach  Ace Kvale  Kasha Rigby  Scot Schmidt  Jim Zellers

Scot Schmidt

Hear Scot's Call

We're currently snowed in. Yesterday we made the transfer from Camp 2 to Camp 3. We went actually by way of Kazakhstan, so we are now — we crossed the border. We are kind of in the four corners here of China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia. The mountain just right over to my right here is the intersection of the borders.

Weather Permitting we will do a summit attempt tomorrow or the next day. Everybody is doing well. We are held up in snow caves and we have enough food and fuel for about three more nights and we're just praying for the weather to give us a break. Okay, here's Ace.

Ace Kvale: I know that you guys have that map, those maps that you made, and if you want to look at our route, when you look at the map from Akkem Lake, you see there's that big north wall. Then you go from the mountain there, you go east and you can see... you can kind of go up a valley east of the mountain. Then you go up a little plateau and turn south, and then you come from the east back up from from the Kazakhstan-Russian border. So we're almost going all the way around the back side if you want to try to trace our route on the map. It goes all the way around in a circle around the mountain. But the mountain is so huge it's unbelievable. It's not like ...

[Satellite transmission failed, but Ace called us back — listen to the rest of this dispatch.]

— Scot Schmidt, pioneering ski mountaineer; and Ace Kvale, skier, photographer and expedition organizer

EXPEDITION DISPATCHES