Entries from Expedition Dispatches
Today was another great day for the crew down here in Ecuador. After an early rise and quick breakfast we loaded up our van and headed out on the road from Quito into the countryside. The valleys and mountainsides around Quito are a gorgeous emerald green and the high peaks were all covered in fresh snow. We caught glimpses of our first mountaineering objective Cayambe, as clouds moved in and out. Needless to say the group was excited as we continued past Cayambe to a large volcanic caldera called Fuya Fuya. We spent the late morning and early afternoon summiting one of the twin peaks of Fuya Fuya at around 4,200 m. The views from the summit were spectacular. We looked down on a huge lake filling the crater and were surrounded by many beautiful peaks. After a quick descent the team headed to the Hacienda San Luis for dinner some R&R. Everybody is enjoying the beautiful grounds and rustic rooms (complete with fireplace) here. Tomorow's plans call for a trip to the open air market in Otovalo and then a move up to the climber refugio high on Cayambe!
I'll check in again as soon as I can, we hope everyone at home is doing well too!
Ciao from the Equator!
Thanks to Dawn Kim for the photos in this post!
Hi everybody, it's Billy checking in with another dispatch from Quito, Ecuador. Today's events brought us some of the first exertion of the trip. After a pleasant breakfast the crew geared up and headed out in taxis to the teleferico where we rode a gondola up to 13,600'. From there we began our first acclimitzation hike up on the volcano, Rucu Pichincha. We hiked up through bright green hillsides and skirted some large volcanic cliffs, moving in and out of the clouds, all the while with the sprawl of Quito far below. It was a pretty cool place to get things started with some amazing views when the clouds parted. After stretching our legs and working our lungs a bit we headed back down to Quito in the late afternoon. The day finished with a thorough gear check for the mountaineering to come and a team dinner on our last night here in Quito.
Tomorrow, an early rise and escape from Babylon will take us out to Cerra Fuya Fuya (13,986') for our next training hike. We'll check back as soon as we can!
Thanks to Dawn Kim for the photos in this post!
The team arrived late last night and met formally for the first time over breakfast this morning. We enjoyed a great buffet for breakfast at our hotel and set out for an all day tour of Quito which included a visit to the physical equator. The team enjoyed visiting many old churches, government buildings, and private homes some of which dated back to the 1500's! The Spaniards founded the colonial city in 1538, so lots of the architecture is original and impressive. So much so that the entire old town neighborhood in Quito is a UNESCO world heritage site. We visited one church in particular with huge vaulted ceilings that were completely covered in baroque woodworking and gold leaf. Apparently over 52 kg of pure gold were used to decorate the church and show the power and glory of Rome. It's kind of crazy to think about how young many of the cities in the United States really are compared to other places in the world.
After the city tour we enjoyed a fritada lunch. It was a traditional Ecuadorian meal consisting of maize, fried pork, avocado, tomatoes, plantains, and potato soup. Delicious!
Later in the afternoon we took a trip to the physical equator where we enjoyed some fun experiments. There is no coriolis effect directly on the equator so water will drain from a basin straight down when on the equator, spin counter-clockwise four feet north, and clockwise four feet south! I didn't believe it until I saw it. It was also possible to balance fresh eggs vertically on a nail. Cool stuff. And all the while we were beginning our acclimitization because Quito sits at nearly 10,000 ft. Tomorrow we will head out to the teleferique and the volcano Pichincha for our first acclimatization hike, hopefully the weather cooperates!
Thanks to Dawn Kim for the photos in this post!
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Categories: Expedition Dispatches Cho Oyu
The team has safely returned to Kathmandu.
We left base camp early on the morning of Oct. 3rd and walked about 10 miles to get to our ride out. It was a cold and windy day, but we made good time. Once in our vehicle we drove for many hours across the beautiful Tibetan plateau. After several hours we reached the valley that leads to the border between Tibet and Nepal. It was a amazing to drive through this huge valley that descends over 10,000'. It had been a month since we had seen anything green and it overwhelmed our senses. We spent the night in Zhangmu and crossed the border in the morning and headed for Kathmandu. It was another long day but everyone was happy to be back to Kathmandu and it was quite the culture shock. After getting checked into our hotel we headed out for dinner where we ran into many of the climbers who were also on Cho Oyu and a few friends from other expeditions. It sounded like everyone had a tough climbing season.
It was a great trip and certainly the summit would have made it better, but it's nice to be healthy and headed home after such tough weather and climbing conditions.
Should be home soon.
Hey RMI and everybody back home. This is Casey checking in from the Cho Oyu Expedition.
Just wanted to let everyone know that today we officially decided to pull the plug and not continue to climb on the upper mountain. The snow conditions continue to exist. It's a relatively high level of avalanche hazard as well as no one has been on the upper mountain in the last few days. We are certainly not going to be the first team to be up there and stick our necks out. Add that to the forecast that we have, which is some high winds and cold temperatures as the jet stream approaches and we are actually even seeing that today with some winds and some clouds building. The majority of the expeditions here have all packed up and are heading home currently. There are a few individuals left that may stick their necks out and give it a shot, but again, we think that it is foolish for our team to take that risk.
Everyone's doing great. Today we actually hiked up to Camp 1 and picked up most of our gear that we had left there. We got the majority of that stuff back to Advanced Basecamp here. Our plan is to relax here for the next day and then our yaks come in on the 3rd to pick up all of our loads to carry that stuff back to the main road, which is about a day-and-a-half trek. Our plan is to leave on the 3rd and try to get to the road and hopefully catch a ride on the 4th. Then we'll drive from Basecamp to Zangmu, on the border of Tibet and Nepal. Our plan then on the 5th is to possibly arrive in Kathmandu if everything goes well.
I'm happy that everyone feels good with our decision and we look forward to coming home and seeing everybody and telling you all about our adventure. Thanks a lot you guys.
Hello everybody, this is Casey checking in from the Cho Oyu Expedition.
We wanted to let everybody know that the entire team has safely returned to Advanced Base Camp where we are now enjoying warm, wonderful meals from our cook Kumar.
Yesterday we made a valiant effort to try to reach Camp 2 but were turned around due to high winds and cold temperatures. There has also been a fair amount of exploration by some of the top Sherpa on the mountain to try to get a route kicked in to the summit. But it still looks like the avalanche danger is significantly higher than we would like it to be. Looks like a number of expeditions are all leaving and headed home.
We have a few more days here so we are going to wait it out and see if the weather or avalanche conditions can improve in the next few days before we make our decision as to head back up the mountain or head home a little bit early. We are going to take three rest days here and then most likely make our decision.
Stay tuned and we will let you know as the events unfold.
Hey RMI, this is Casey calling in from Camp 1 on Cho Oyu.
We woke today to some pretty blustery skies and some snow whirling around so we decided to drag our feet a little to see if the weather would change a bit in our favor. Unfortunately, it did not. It seems like the jet stream is still a bit close to us here. It has made for some pretty miserable climbing conditions. Pretty high winds and snow blowing off of the surface which would make it challenging to see while climbing.
The team has been hunkered down here at Camp 1, or as we like to call it, "Camp Fun." We have been stuck in our tents for basically the last 24 hours and trying not to go stir crazy.
Everybody's in good spirits and we have our fingers crossed hoping that tomorrow proves to be a little nicer and allows us to sneak up to Camp 2. Everything else is going great and we'll try to touch base again tomorrow.
Everything is going great, in fact, things couldn't really be better. The last two days have been incredibly sunny and warm, which was oh so needed. The whole team got showers yesterday, we did laundry, basked in the sun, and dried everything out. It was a nice finish to our rest days.
This morning we got up and had beautifully clear skies and a leisurely breakfast about 10 a.m. We then hiked about four hours to reach Camp 1 where we currently are. It sits about 21,000' and we have a great view of the upper mountain conditions and climbers. There is a bit of wind blowing off the summit and it's scouring some of the snow that has been deposited over the last ten days of snow we have gotten.
Everyone is doing great and feeling good. We are getting settled into our tents for the night. Firing up the stoves to make ourselves some dinner, then into our sleeping bags before the sun goes down. As soon as it does it gets chilly up here. We will be making ourselves as comfortable as can be. Things are going well. Tomorrow we are hoping to push all the way up to Camp 2 and spend the night there at around 23,000'.
We'll check in tomorrow if we can get ourselves up to Camp 2. All right everybody, hope everyone's doing well back home. We miss you.
"Tah-shi de-leh." Hello everybody. "Tah-shi de-leh" is a Tibetan greeting that is used when greeting people and also when you say "Good-bye."
This is Casey checking in from the Cho Oyu Expedition.
The team is doing great. We've been relaxing here at ABC for the last two days taking rest days, catching up on sleep, reading, and having lots of social time in our tent because it has been snowing nonstop since we've been here. We get these squawls that come through every day for several hours and then some light breaks. With the weather we are going to take one more day of rest tomorrow down here and then head up to Camp 1 the day after.
Currently the upper mountain has a fair amount of new snow and the sherpa teams that are in charge of fixing the route to the summit have not been able to get too far due to the deep snow and avalanche conditions. We are sitting good because we are still about ten days out from our summit bid, which is great. There are several teams here that are itching to go since they have been here at ABC for the last week waiting for the weather to open up so they can go do their summit attempt. We are nice and relaxed here with our schedule.
Kumar, our cook, has been taking great care of us and keeping us healthy. One more day of relaxation and we'll check in again probably when we head up to Camp 1 two days from now.
Okay everybody, hope you're doing well.
Hey everybody back home, this is Casey checking in from the Cho Oyu Expedition.
The team has safely returned from our first acclimatization foray up on the upper mountain. On Sunday we left ABC and headed up to Camp 1. It took about 45 minutes less than our first climb up there. The team did great. We spent the night again to continue our acclimatization. In the morning we woke up to a beautiful morning so we got up and hiked to almost Camp 2, which sits about 23,000'. We set some new altitude records for a few folks. We headed back down to Camp 1 and had another night's rest up there.
This morning we woke up early and descended the rest of the way back to ABC. Everyone's doing great but a little bit tired from all the walking and hard breathing at this high altitude. Everybody's in great spirits. On our acclimatization hike, the only day we had to go to Camp 2, it actually didn't snow that day but it did snow that evening. We've been here about a week and it has been snowing every day, light accumulation but it is a trend that we've had. Been kinda nice but at the same time we are missing the sunshine. Another positive note is that it has been three weeks since we left the states and we are officially halfway through our trip. Hopefully in about two more weeks we are looking to reach the summit. And then maybe in about one week after that we'll be leaving the mountain.
We are going to spend the next two days resting here at ABC. We will check in again in another day or so.
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