Summit teams and dates have been set!  It appears that the weather will be favorable for a summit attempt the 20th through the 23rd and possibly until the 26th.  We have split into two teams.  I will be on the first wave set to summit the 21st.  The second group will shoot for the 23rd.  Unfortunately there is going to be crowds on all the days.  What started out appearing to be a long season has been compressed into fewer days it now seems as the monsoon is brewing in the Bay of Bengal and beginning to move north.  Once it arrives with constant snows the season will be over.

I will leave two days from today on the 17th and go straight to C2 skipping C1 unless there is trouble in ice fall that slows us down.  That is a still a good 7 to 10 hour day.  We will rest at C2 on the 18th.  On the morning of the 19th we will move to C3.  There we will begin using oxygen.  Camp 3 is a very exposed camp on the Lhotse face at about 23,600 feet.  We will spend the night there and leave early the next morning for our final camp (C4 naturally) at the South Col.  The South Col is a flat area between Lhotse and Everest.  Although the Col is still 3,000 feet below the summit at 26,000 feet it is above most of the worlds mountains.  I hope to get to C4 by 2:00 PM.  If I am feeling okay and the weather is still cooperating we will rest, hydrate, try to eat and get ready to attempt the summit that night.

The final summit attempt on Everest will start between 8:00 and 10:00 PM local time.  The goal would be to be on the summit close to daylight somewhere around 4:30 AM.  Most climbers will take between 8 and 10 hours to reach the summit and another 4 to 6 coming down.  That number is very subjective because deep snow, crowds and just moving slow can easily push summit time back.  We have agreed on a 2:00 PM turn around.  That means any climber who has not made it too the summit by then must abandon the attempt and go down.  This mandatory turn around is based on our limited oxygen supply and the “Everest Standard Weather” I have been talking about since we reached Base Camp.  If there is to be bad weather it most likely will be in the afternoon.  Our summit bids begin at night to allow: 1) the maximum amount of time from a weather perspective; 2) because it is much easier to go up in the dark than to come down (your headlight is shining at the mountain and foot holds going up, it is shining into nothing going down; 3) 75% of all accidents happen on descent and you would rather be dealing with trouble with the day ahead than with night coming.

The mood here is one of excitement with trepidation.  Everyone is trying to make sure they have everything ready to go.  Most of the talk is about how to manage the oxygen.  For most of the people who have not been on Everest before this will be the first time that they have climbed with oxygen and they are understandably apprehensive.  Unfortunately O2 doesn’t make the difference that most non-climbers think it does.  Because of the limited amount that a climber can carry most people will spend the bulk of their time at a flow rate of 2 liters per minute.  Most people breathe almost 2 liters each breath and when working hard may breathe 20 times a minute for a total of 40 LPM.  If you are supplementing that with O2 at a rate of 2 LPM you aren’t going to feel like you are at Applebees.  Actually it makes you feel about 4,000 to 6,000 feet lower.  So at the summit a climber still feels like he is at 25,000 which by the way is the beginning of the infamous “death zone” where life can not be sustained for more than a short amount of time.

It is difficult for me to put into words what operating at those low levels of oxygen is like.  It is common on summit day for the average climber to take a couple of steps and then feel like they have run a sprint and need to catch their breath.  At sea level there are plenty of high school kids that can run a hundred yards in under ten seconds.  On summit day the average climber will take 20 minutes to go a hundred yards.  It is as much a mental as a physical endurance event.  Plus there is always the knowledge that getting to the top is only half way.  Granted it is much easier to go down.  It takes about a third the time as a rule of thumb.  However by then most people have been going since C3 with little sleep, limited water and snacks for food.  So the trick is always being sure you have enough energy to get back down.

Some once called Everest the highest cemetery in the world.  The mountain is littered with bodies of people who just set down and died.  It is virtually impossible to recover bodies from the highest reaches of Everest so where they sit down is where they stay – another good reason to climb in the dark!  Fortunately for me I’m not as driven as some of these people.  My plan is not just to come down to C4 on summit day but to descend all the way to the relative safety of C2 so I have set more conservative turn around times and target times at each of the two main features above C4: the Balcony (named that because it is a relatively flat spot in the generally relentless uphill) and the South Summit.  They are approximately 1/3 and 2/3 of the way to the summit.  If I am not hitting my numbers at either of these spots I’m headed to Kathmandu for a hot shower and the first flight home!  Right now I’m just excited that I’ll have a shot at the top.