News: Camp 6 Established
Eric Simonson - Basecamp
Mon, April 23, 2001 3:10AM

After sitting at the North Col for two nights due to the high winds yesterday that made it impossible to climb aqbove the Col, we finally got a break in the weather today. Kami and his team left at 7 am and were able to push to Camp 5 where they set up a couple of our Eureka Fifth Season tents and dropped off some loads of gear to make it possible to occupy this camp. This included several of our Craghopper high altitude down sleeping bags, Slumberjack foam mattresses, MSR hanging stoves, potsets, and gas cartridges as well as several cargo nets to lash down the gear and tents. Then several of the Sherpas continued up towards Camp 6 at 27,000 feet fixing additional rope en route to the camp and dropping off more equipment up there. Also today, Dave, Tap, and Andy moved up to Camp 5, searching en route several previously identified sites of interest. While Kami and his team headed back down to ABC for a couple rest days, Panuru and his team moved up to the North Col to continue stocking Camp 6 over the next couple days.

With any luck with the weather, this next few days should allow us to occupy Camp 5 and 6 and to initiate the first phase of the search plan. The hope is that tomorrow, Dave, Tap, and Andy will move to Camp 6, and Brent, Jake, and John will move up to the Col where they will be in position to move up to Camp 5 the next day. This way we have two teams in position to go into the search area over the next few days. Since there is a limited amount of time people can remain at 26-27,000 feet we hope this strategy will maximise the length of the search window we can take advantage of.

Eric Simonson, Expedition Leader

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