Editor's Note: Dave's sat phone switched to "China mode" as he is just yards from the border, and shut down, but Expedition Leader Mark Tucker is relaying messages, the latest arrived at approximately 8 a.m. Nepal time Monday morning, or 7:00 p.m. Sunday night PDT:

 

Namaste, GreatOutdoors, Mark Tucker here. Just talked to Dave. The weather at the Col is not too bad, there are people who were pushing on last night, he does see a pretty good plume coming off the Southeast Ridge there. It was a tough decision last night but he feels pretty comfortable with what he did there. It's all about client care under these conditions. Boy, Nicky deserves a good shot, not trying to get her too beat up. They are warming up the boots, trying to knock the ice off of them, as we mentioned they left the Col and it just started riming up on them, snowing, blowing, and visibility was just getting worse as they progressed. So that decision being made, he waited as late as he thought was comfortable for putting themselves in the right position for summit time. We're going through logistics, right now, we're keeping track of how the summit team is doing, we don't want to subject to the elements of there even in a tent for too long, but so far we're moving in the direction of making another shot tonight. We talked directly to the weather service we work with and his idea is that maybe there is a slight decrease in winds, all we need is a little four or five hour window there to pull this off. We got our fingers crossed and we'll keep you posted. If they pull the plug today that will be in the next few hours so they have a chance to get out of there and get back down to Camp II. But I got the feeling that those two tough mountain climbers up there may try one more shot and that's going to probably be it, So I can't really say he pulled the trigger, let's just say it wasn't a misfire, can't really put it into words, but they are doing well, spirits are good. So we're going to maybe give it another shot. We'll let you know.