Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Everest 2008- Lucky Number 8- Olympic torch

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Hey,

I was awoken by the now familiar sound of the small jet aircraft circling the Summit. Over the last week, the aircraft had been capturing the progress of the Olympic torch team as they made their way up the other side of the mountain. Making my way to the mess tent at 7 am news reached me that the Torch had in fact reached the top. Reports were that over 20 climbers had summitted by 6 am Nepal time. I guess it was always going to be the 8th that the Chinese summitted, being that it is their lucky number and the Olympics start on 08/08/2008!!.


The news of the summit was met with great cheer here on the South side basecamp; the army cheer because they can now go back home and the climbers can now climb without any of the restrictions that were in place. With that in mind we leave at 2 am tomorrow morning for Camp 2 and onward to Camp 3 in the next couple of days to finish our acclimatisation. The team will be back down in BC on the 13th May where we will be resting up and planning our summit bid.


Other news is that we have the film crew from the History Channel arriving today to document the build up to, and our summit bid from a basecamp viewpoint.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Martin,

Sounds like all is going well and progressing nicely for your summit. You will have left by now but good luck with the climb to Camp 2 then 3. The thought of the football game with the Nepalese at the end sounds like a challenge, but am sure by that time you'll be on such a high it'll be a walk in the park.

I've a message for you from the Crawfords who are presently up at Fort William in their caravan. They've pitched up at the bottom of Ben Nevis and went to have a wee walk up a bit of it yesterday! They tell me Carla has started early in her training to be your Sherpa on your next summit - insisting that she didn't need any help and had the determined attitude of "no leave me - me do it myself"! She should be up to scratch by the time you get back. :-)

Take care, speak soon.

Carolyn & The Crawford Clan. xx

Anonymous said...

Martin,

Sounds good. Keep up the good work. See you later on the power station.

Anders

Anonymous said...

Great news that you can now go ahead with the rest of your climb. You must have square eyes by now with all those DVDs! Jack and Craig - Holly's caterpillars, have grown so much over the last week and must now be about 10 times their original size. Kieran can now play football, but it is very much his own version! He calls you Mamat and is also beginning to say his own name - something he didn't even attempt before. I'm still remembering about recording the game next week. Good luck with your bid for the summit.Mum x