Today we had our Puja ceremony with our whole team of climbers, guides, and sherpas. A Buddhist Lama led the prayers asking the mountain for safe passage before we begin climbing. We had very nice weather and will relax this afternoon. Tomorrow we begin our technical climbing review in the lower Khumbu Icefall. The weather is improving and we are excited to begin our acclimatization process by climbing high to sleep at our Camps 1 & 2. Everyone is doing well!

Our team arrived in Namche last night after a wonderful day of trekking and then enjoyed the comfort and fine meals at the Panorama lodge. Today we hiked up to the Everest view hotel for clear views of Everest, Lhotse and Ama Dablam, and then to Khumjung to visit the Hillary School. We will spend 2 more nights here in Namche before making our way up the valley towards base camp. Everyone is doing great.

This morning a few members took a helicopter flight, and we had a look at the new route up the Khumbu Icefall to Camp 1 on Everest. We were able to see clearly that the new route is in fact completely new, and veers to the ‘climbers right’ near Nuptse, avoiding the hanging ice on the West Shoulder that buried the 16 Nepali mountain workers last year. It appears that climbers will have to negotiate broken ice as before, and perhaps more vertical ladders. The red line on the right shows the new route (if you look closely you can see the footprints, ladders, fixed lines) while the red line on the left is the approximate old route from last year. There is at least one section that has 4 vertical ladders tied together to ascend up a very large ice cliff.

Everest & Lhotse 2015 is coming soon…stay tuned!  Check out Google’s amazing footage of the Khumbu!  We are so excited to be back in this magical place very soon!