Summit bid starts tonight

Peter called this morning, as expected. Since he left, I've had my phone by my side 24/7. The chances he has to call are erratic and I'm happy to be able to pick up when he can get through. So at 5 a.m. this morning my ringing phone woke me and we were able to touch base. After we talked he was going to climb into his tent in hopes of a few hours of sleep before they depart on the start of their official summit bid. They plan to leave Everest Base Camp at about 2 a.m. to climb through the Khumbu Icefall, pass Camp 1, and stop for the day at Camp 2. With the time difference, that means his departure from base camp will be at around 1 pm Pacific Time today. Please send Peter, Eric, their team, and everyone on the mountain your best wishes this afternoon!

I'll track their progress via GPS and post when I hear more or see that they've made it to Camp 2. The roundtrip summit bid back to base camp is expected to take about a week. I won't speak to Peter during that time, but I do hope to get messages from the team and via their GPS which I'll continue to share.

I've been following a lot of the expeditions and individual climbers and was able to track the progress of a few climbers with Madison Mountaineering who left base camp yesterday, one day ahead of Peter. With the current route through the Icefall, and at their current level of acclimatization it looks like the trip to Camp to 2 is taking the climbers somewhere around 7 hours. Compare that to their first trips which were roughly 10 hours to Camp 1 and another 5-ish hours between Camp 1 and Camp 2 the next day. Everyone has gotten faster. 

Of course, everyone is watching the weather. Camp 2 is the most comfortable of the high camps, so they have an opportunity to rest there before deciding that suitable summit weather is near. I found this proposed schedule from Madison Mountaineering. It appears that their current interpretation of the coming weather is that that weather may be conducive to summiting around May 20. 

I've been really impressed with the professionalism of that team, so I put some stock in their thoughts. But I haven't found much evidence that a lot of other teams are on their same schedule. Most teams are still saying they are watching for a weather window. We'll see tonight how many other teams depart from base camp.

For the summit day, they'll be looking for a forecast that has winds less than 30 mph. According to Alan Arnette's calculations, 150 have summited so far with about 350 remaining. (Those numbers include Sherpa support which isn't always the case in the numbers you may see.) I did see news of one team pulling out this morning, so we could take about 30 from the list of potential summiters.

Peter's attitude is great and hearing that is incredibly reassuring to me. He's never been prone to "summit fever" and even on such an enormous expedition, that hasn't changed. He's already so grateful for the full experience he's had up there. I've always marvelled at his ability to do really hard things, with huge energy and discomfort without an attachment to the outcome. For him, standing on the summit has never been a huge part of the goal. Every single thing that happens to get there is just as important to him. You'd think that would mean that if he doesn't care about the summit that he might quit when it gets uncomfortable, but that isn't the case either. I can't really explain that part, but the next time you have coffee with Peter, you should ask him about it, because he'll have an interesting and unusual answer, I promise.

While Peter and his team were on their rest break in the lower villages, he recorded this video of their guide, Don W., talking about how people prepare for climbing Everest. Now is the time that all that preparation comes into use!