For further information and different perspectives on our expedition see coverage also at:
- capgemini.co.uk/everest2000
- mountainzone.com
- earthtreksclimbing.com (a perspective from Chris Warner, mountain guide)

Day 54 of Expedition May 20th
Day 1 Summit Bid
TK writes: We have been fine tuning our packs for a couple of days hoping for a smooth get away this morning.

Last minute food decisions get in the way and also various cameramen want interview footage including, in one case, a shot with the camera inside the ruck sack looking out at the climber! Still we only miss the target departure time by 10mins. at 10:10am.

Jean heads out, leading Kieron, Daniel and Tony. Chris, Andy and the sherpas will join us by missing out to C1 at the N. Col. tomorrow and picking us up at C2.
Little do we know that within hours the whole game plan will change. It is breathlessly still and hot on the glacier approaching the Col. Kieron has a real stride on with Tony following and Daniel and Jean behind. The first sign of the days upheavals comes when looking back down the face we see Jean sitting on his pack at the bottom of the fixed rope. Jean is attempting to be the oldest summitteer at 62 and this is his final chance. Within 10mins he is walking back to ABC and none of us know why.
The weather is deteriorating somewhat but we all continue up, to the sound of avalanches roaring down the face of the north col. to the east of us.
The next problem is when Kieron radios ABC 6.5hrs after leaving to say there was no sign of Tony who has been passed by Daniel and is moving slowly. Poor old Tony has been sick twice on the way up and is now seriously dehydrated and what should be a 4hr climb and gone well wrong. Tony clambers onto the north col exhausted as Kieron is radioing Russ. Lots and lots of sweet tea is the immediate medicine. By then, Jean is back in ABC and the word is he has pulled the pin. Russ quickly mobilises Ivan in the "B" team with the intention of consolidating both groups.
Ivan leaves ABC around 4pm and climbes the last 100m's in the dark to C1. The 20th has one more twist for us. Russ has received the latest weather forecast and our target of the 24th now looks like it has a rival in the 25th. So we decide that the additional day in the programme is best spent as low as possible and plan to spread the food ration to cover a second night at 7100m on the North Col.
Also, most of us have picked up on news from passing climbers that someone has taken a fatal fall somewhere in the region of the traverse between steps 1 and 2. This is a sombre note to close the day.

Day 55 of Expedition May 21st
Day 2 Summit Bid
TK writes: A day at the north col. Not a lot to say except plenty of tea and soup and trying to get food down. Dozing to conserve energy and once again tuning packs. There's always something to throw out to get the weight down.
Lots of teams are coming off the mountain. The dutch staggered into C1 exhausted after a failed summit attempt due to high wind and one of their members suffering from HACE (high altitude cerebral oedema). A sherpa comes into camp having been assisted down by a russian climber, he is behaving in an odd manner. Tony speaks to him and makes sure that he gets into a tent for shelter. (See Graham's account of assistance for the same fellow later tomorrow).
The search continues to establish the identity of the fatal faller yesterday. Russell is heavily involved in this at ABC and Tony is interviewing climbers as they pass through the north col. and radioing the details of any observations to Russ to try and build up a picture. Eventually the partner of the dead climber comes into C1 and Tony speaks to him and relays the information to Russ who is able to coordinate activity in ABC. It is a grim task and reminds us all that this is a serious mountaineering undertaking and a venture into an environment where all time is borrowed time. The human body is not designed to survive above 6500m and all time in the upper reaches of Mount Everest is time in the "The Death Zone".

Day 56 of Expedition May 22nd
Day 3 Summit Bid
ABC Manager writes: 22.5.00 Chris Warner leaves ABC at 0530 hrs, thinking he's on his summit bid at last. He climbs the North Col, and picks up Tony, Daniel, Ivan and Kieron at 0745 from the tents at Camp 1. They plod up the slopes towards Camp 2, but the weather clamps in with high winds and swirling snow. They all arrive eventually, and crawl into the safety of the tents after a gruelling day. Unfortunately, the appalling weather this season is not going to let them go that easily.
Meanwhile, Mark Whetu leaves ABC after lunch and heads for the North Col into the same weather and holes up in a tent at Camp 1 on the Col. He's hoping to film, and is not impressed with the conditions.
Down at ABC a Sherpa working for the Chinese TV team, who has nearly died at the top camp is brought down to Russell's camp. All the rescues on this side seem to be coordinated by Russell Brice, part of his "Mayor of Rongbuk" persona- this will be the 14th life he's had a hand in saving on this side of Everest. We clear our dining tent down to a field-hospital, and Dr. Walter Pfeihofer joins us from a Swiss expedition to deal with the casualty. The 53 year-old Sherpa arrives on a stretcher carried by his friends. He was with a Chinese climber who was being filmed by a regional Chinese TV station, but no one knows where the climber is. I feel that the Sherpa is too old to be working at over 27,000ft for several days, and he's in a bad way with cerebral oedema- a potentially fatal swelling of the brain stem. He looks half-dead as he's brought in. But it's wonderful to see how everyone gathers around to help him. He's given IV fluids, Dexamethazone, oxygen and eventually hot drinks. He spends the night with us, using oxygen and it looks as if he'll live.

TK Writes:
Driving hard up the north ridge. A day of 2 halves - no wind and clear blue skies heralds a stinking hot climb with down suits rolled around waists.... a real problem with dehydration. Chris has come up from ABC in a blistering few hours to join us around halfway up the ridge. He has picked up some of Daniels load in passing, as the heavy pack was slowing him down.
Ivan is off the hill like a tank, Tony and Kieron are slower than usual. Tony is still weak after his sickness going up the col, Kieron has had a bad night - 7100m is no place to hang around relaxing. Shortly after midday, a front comes through and turns the conditions on their head. Full down kit is needed to cope with the 20knot wind, driving snow and ice and near zero visibility. There is a near 20degC swing in temperatures. Tony and Kieron's slower pace caught them hard and the last 200m vertical is plugging new steps in fresh loose snow. A foot up and six inches back is tiring and it isn't helped when they are hit by a small slab avalanche. No harm done but a 5hr climb takes 7.5hrs and leg two of the summitt bid has dished a butt kicking. Clambering into C2 tents at 7500m is no fun. First problem is the tents are buried and have to be dug out. Hot brews are needed fast, before tackling the job of organising the tent, cleaning out the spindrift, trying not to get ice down the neck if your head touches the roof of the tent and keeping the sleeping bag dry.. There is no desire to eat, but food must be consumed and enough snow melted to fill a waterbottle to last through the night. Meantime the tent feels like its trying to take off into the Rongbuk but it has extra rope over it and so should be secure. Its a wrestless night, waking up half a dozen times. Somewhere in the night the realisation that snow drifts are blocking each end of the tent. Shoving a ski pole out makes a breathing air hole through the snow. Suffocation is an irritating problem and should be avoided. Nobody has a particularly good night. Chris and Daniel are in one tent, Ivan and Kieron in another and Tony on his own in a tent in between. Tony has a chest infection which is irrated by the high altitude cough that pretty much everyone has and he is sick again in the night. Both Kieron and Tony have bruised ribs due to the extreme nature of their coughing - its not unusual to break ribs this way but they've both got away with it so far - just one of the many spin off benefits of this altitude game.

Day 57 of Expedition May 23rd
Day 4 Summit Bid
ABC Manager writes: 23.5.00 Andy and Russell leave ABC at 05:30hrs for North Col. The weather is still bad. Our invalid is sleeping like a baby when I quietly look in at him around 0630. Quite honestly, this is best thing I've seen on this whole expedition. At 10:00hrs a party of Sherpas arrive with a single rucksack frame. They load him onto it and one big strong Sherpa picks it up and staggers down the moraine with him. Apparently they'll swap every ten minutes. We hear later that he reached Base Camp safely and was evacuated to Zhangmu the next day. I'm aware that this rescue has used $1000 of Russell's oxygen, and I wonder if he'll ever get it back. I'm also aware that this happens every year.
Up the hill everybody is pinned down in their tents by high winds and drifting snow. What do you do? After exhausting your tent-mate's life story there's nothing to do. I was stuck in a blizzard for several days in 1989 and we had one large book- "Rivals" by Jilly Cooper. We cut it up into four pieces, and one poor unfortunate had to read it in the order D, A, B and C, being utterly confused by plot, characters and denoument.

TK writes:
Dawn brings a relaxation in the wind but not a cessation. Its been battering us at around 40 to 45 knots consistently and gusting to 50knots. It is hard to stand up and that is pinning us in the tents. We expect another butt kicking plugging up the exposed ridge to 7900m C3. Just as we're getting ready to go Russ radio's from the north col. (he's on his way up as back up) to recommend that we sit out the bad weather at 7500m C2 and then go with a revised date of 26th for the summit. Whilst this makes sense in light of a new forecast another day spent at 7500m is a tough call in this very bad weather on the edge of the death zone.
Dawn for Tony brings conditions inside the tent like the aftermath of the chicken wars. A repair in the bottom of his down suit has failed in the night and there is goose down everwhere, sticking to the condensation on the inside of the tent and all the equipment. The day passes trying to make the tent more comfortable and forcing fluids and limited food down inspite of no appetite. The tent is constantly rattled and flapped by the severe winds. The wind tugs at it and it tugs at your nerves with its incessant cracking, crashing and rustling.
Occassionaly, to relieve the boredom but like a spike to your nervous system, a lump of ice or snow or rock will bounce off the roof as it crashes on its journey down the mountain.
Two futile attempts to get completely kitted out in down gear, get out and dig out the drifts now covering both ends and more than half the tent, only result in importing buckets of spindrift into the tent and getting very cold. Two hours later the tent is buried again.
The wind strength is increasing its going to be a wild night. I clamber into the sleeping bag and make sure all the kit around me is prepared to cope with the massive condensation problems there will be in the mornng.

Day 58 of Expedition May 24th
Day 5 Summit Bid
ABC Manager writes: 24.5.00 The two teams awake at Camps 1 and 2 to find the weather worse. At the higher camp they have to crawl out to dig away the snow. The wind is gusting up to 50 knots. What do they do? Stick it out for another day? Or descend? If the latter, will they have the strength to climb back up again if the weather comes right? If the former, will their strength survive another day of minimal food and water? I'm writing this as it happens- it's 11;45hrs now- so I'm as anxious as they must be.

TK writes:
This is about as much fun as being told to sleep in a deep freeze for the night whilst the freezer is shaken violently from the outside and then in the morning you get woken up by someone spraying your face with ice cold water. He's cracked up and it only took 5 days.
This is normal procedure for a windy night in the mountains. Well sub zero temps are normal and whilst making last evening brew all the steam is freezing on the inside of the tent, together with moisture laiden breath freezing over-night. Shortly after light hits the tent in the morning it all melts and showers down on everything.
This is where "mountain money" comes in - toilet paper. In addition to its conventional use (for which I'm desperate having run out a day ago) it is used as tissue for noses, cleaning the eating bowl and spoon (there's only one, per person, for all drinks and meals), cleaning up sick (a personal favourite), wiping up snow, ice and spindrift from the tent floor and trying to get the condensation and ice before it gets you (and if you fail then moping up). Valuable the old T.P.
We have three tents at C2 7500m. They are perched on a shelf cut into the snow at the top of the long snow slope of the north ridge. There is about a 10inch ledge on the outer edge of this shelf and then the north ridge drops away for a couple of kilometres. One slip moving around here and the next stop would be ABC over 3000ft below without stopping at C1 enroute. Take care when popping out for a pee here.
We hoped to get away up to C3 this morning but the weather is horrendous. The wind is hammering us down with 50knot blowing continuously. The snow is being driven like knives into our flesh. The tents are being buried persistently inspite of battling to dig them out. Tony's tent gets socked in completely because of its position in the line. He has to make breathing holes through the drifts by poking out a ski pole regularly.
It was this idea that allowed him to burrow a hole from his tent to Kieron and Ivan's tent to pass them the emergency radio. The radio was passed over on the end of a ski pole in a bag. Chris has the main radio and Tony's lonely spot had been relieved by listening to radio schedules. But Kieron and Ivan had been feeling a little cut off from communications and news. Tony had been trying to relay info by yelling across the six foot gap but the Everest wind was just whipping the words away into the Rongbuk.

Food is running low by now due to the two extra days at altitude and the bad weather is worrying everyone with its impact on the schedule. Russ is so concerned he goes down from the Col to ABC for a further weather update and the news is not good. In the early afternoon he radios C2 and pulls the plug. We have approx. 5hrs of daylight to descend to C1 dump all the down gear and rerig with goretex to drop down to ABC. There isn't much time for debate but everyone was wrestling with the phsychological impact - does this mean our summit attempts are over or is there time for another attempt. Even if there is time for another attempt will our bodies have any reserve left to deliver it. This is a nightmare. Surely its not all over.