Dispatch 33: Halfway Through and Washing Clothes

Hey, this is Dave at Everest Base Camp. And let's see last night we had a quick snow shower that dropped three or four inches of snow, and it made base camp all white this morning. I just spent the morning washing clothes, it's May, halfway through the trip, so it's time to wash some clothes. And then in the afternoon Mark Tucker and I went around Base Camp trying to get some folks to contribute to a fixing party as we call it. A number of Sherpas from different teams are going to head up in about a week and fix the slopes right out of the south Col, the triangular face as we call it, and enable teams to get a head start on summit day if they can fix as far as the Balcony. So we were out soliciting contributions for that and getting to know some of our neighbors that was pretty good. Snowed again this afternoon and evening, so made it pretty . . . resting up again and getting over my carry that I did yesterday. Trying to put in those longer days, but of course I have to make sure I rest up after those days. We had 18 Sherpas carrying loads go to the South Col so that's pretty good for our long term prospects, means our IMG team is in really good shape for mounting summit bids. Now I'm hoping to head up to Advance Base Camp here in a couple of days and start working on the upper slopes. I'm trying to do things a little bit different this time just for some variety, rather than sleeping so long up there I want to make more runs through the icefall get more exercise and see if that makes me stronger for the summit bid. We'll see.