A body recovery team went out early this morning but as is so often the case Lapka’s body was not found.  It would have been better for the family but at some point the risk to the searchers is not worth the risk.  In the Buddhist tradition a funeral service will be held for him tomorrow in Tengbouche.  That is about two days walk so I don’t think any of our people will attend.

There has been a general stand down around our camp with people coming by to offer their condolences over a cup of warm tea.  Tomorrow or the day after preparations will resume for the final summit push.  Most of our climbers went down today to take a four day rest.  Since I am ahead of the group and have already had a rest I had intended to just hang out here and hope for an earlier window.  My stomach problems have finally resolved themselves but my cough is beginning to creep back.

One of our members who came down from C2 yesterday was having some foot trouble and could not go down with the group today.  He desperately needs some time down lower and I offered to walk him down tomorrow if no one else is available.  I’m not that crazy about the idea.  I would walk about six hours down and come back the next day or maybe the day after.  I’ll just play it by ear.

Yesterdays forecast called for continued high winds on the summit through the 12th.  I haven’t seen today’s yet.   Part of the challenge is it take four to five days to get in position at C4 for a final summit push.  So you need some reasonable weather to go above C2 and are projecting out wind speed, etc longer than that.  One of the big commercial expeditions have pushed two teams up with summit attempts in the last two days based on the same weather forecast we have.  Everyone at BC is scratching their heads.  Discovery Channel is hear filming this expedition and there is some who are questioning if that has had any effect on their decisions.  I know the people involved and I don’t think that for a minute but I sure wish I knew their thinking.  Whatever the reasons it is good for us because they will not be in our wave.  The scary part is if the forecast are correct most of these two teams will not summit.

There continues to be attrition of people at base camp on all the teams.  We have had a couple of Sherpa members go down with health issues.  One of climber members on our team who had already summited Everest decided yesterday to go down as well.  There were other circumstances which played in his decision but the accident was a factor.  Two climbers were evacuated by helicopter this morning.  There is a new Eurocopter in KTM that actually has the power to take of one climber at a time with a reasonable measure of safety albeit at a cost of $10,000.  That is what you buy insurance for and if I were sick and the docs said go I wouldn’t hesitate.  We have heard a lot of stories of people packing it in for other than health reasons.  Now is the mental part of the climb it is beginning to take its toll.  Fortunately most everyone on our team seems good.  In a couple of weeks it will all be over for good or bad.