Summit Day: Eric is on the move!

Eric and the rest of the team left Camp 4 at the South Col as expected after their dinner today. They are on the move! I'll continue to update as I get information on how he's doing and if the team shares any posts.

Here's a photo showing the key landmarks on their route today:

Source: IMG

Looking back at the news from the mountain yesterday:

Estimates of 110 (Alan Arnette) to 165 (Everest News) to 180 (Everest Times per Nepali Department of Tourism officials) summits yesterday. Alan Arnette is estimating that there may be about 100 trying today. Such hopeful news in terms of crowds!

For IMG, it appears that only a portion of the team tried for the summit yesterday. A large number stayed at Camp 4 and appear to be descending today. I'm guessing that they deemed it unsafe for a summit bid yesterday? Not sure. I know that lots of details will come out in the coming days and weeks, but based on everything else we know, it sure seems likely that the go/no go decision yesterday was very unclear and likely based on personal risk tolerance. 

It also appears that at least a few of the teams that have been waiting in base camp for so long are starting their summit bid today...with hopes of summiting around May 29.

A pretty cool photo shared by Everest News, reportedly taken from Everest Base Camp of people on the summit attempt yesterday! Amazing. (Not sure exactly where on the route this is, because I don't think the summit is visible from base camp itself. So either this is somewhere off the main summit, or the photo was taken from one of the "small" peaks near Base Camp. Either way, super cool)