Preparing for First Rotation

The Everest team is preparing for the first rotation up the mountain – early in the morning on April 21. Network connectivity at base camp was very poor and expedition leader, Garrett Madison, made this audio dispatch via satellite phone. The audio quality is poor – below is our best attempt at a transcription. Today, our team assisted in flying over 700 kg of rope fixing equipment to Camp 2. This gear will soon be used by our Sherpa team in fixing the route to the summit. The return flight brought down almost 190 kg of trash that was collected by our Sherpa team over the past few days at Camp 2.

Hello, this is Garrett calling in for the Mount Everest climbing team. Today our team ventured into the Icefall and climbed up to the first few ladders. We got some great views of base camp, and then came back down for lunch. So, it was a good exprience for us to get a sense of what the Icefall feels like. [garbbled] [Tonight] our plan is to leave base camp and climb up to Camp 1 to start our first rotation on Everest aclimitizing […garbbled…] then back to base camp.

We got to help this afternoon with the helicopter operations to shuttle rope fixing equipment to Camp 2 [for placing the fixed lines up the route to the summit of Mount Everest] and we also flew down almost 190 kg of trash, that our Sherpas collected, that was left by teams in the past at Camp 2. So, great job to our Sherpa who worked hard the past few days up there collecting that trash and bagging it up. Then putting in the helicopter for flying down to base camp here. We were able to […garbbled…]

Great day on Everest today, very productive and possitive day!