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 Home > South Col Dispatch Index > May 24 (8:50pm PST) Dispatch

Thigh-Deep Trailbreaking
South Summit - May 24, 2002 (8:50pm PST)

Prittie
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Greetings to Mountain Zone, this is Willi Prittie reporting from the South Summit of Everest. We got here about 8:20 to 8:30.

The weather's changing a little bit. We've got about a 15 to 20 mile per hour wind and a little bit of a cloud plume on the lee side of Everest. But it's still sunny, still reasonable nice. It looks like it might hold for a bit yet.

"We've had very, very taxing trailbreaking today. A lot of windslab and soft snow, between shin deep and thigh deep..."
So we're continuing on to the summit of Everest. We're thinking it's going to be about an hour and a half roundtrip between South Summit, true Summit and back to the South Summit again.

We've had very, very taxing trailbreaking today. A lot of windslab and soft snow, between shin deep and thigh deep, so it's really, really lucky we've had help from both the National Geographic team and also a solo Italian that's climbing with us at this point.

So it looks like things are going well and it looks like we're going to be able to safely summit and after getting back down to base Camp then the celebration will begin.

— Willi Prittie, Alpine Ascents International Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent

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