Skills review for Ama Dablam

The Madison Mountaineering Ama Dablam expedition team had another excellent day in the Himalaya today, practicing technical skills and cleaning up trash from around base camp and higher up the mountain. Everyone is doing great and looking sharp for the climb ahead! With some weather forecasted tomorrow, the team will wait to see how conditions shape up before going ahead with their plan for the day. Expedition leader, Terray Sylvester checks in with this dispatch from Ama Dablam base camp:

Hello! This is Terray calling in for the 2026 Madison Mountaineering Ama Dablam (6812m/22,349ft) expedition. Today is October 28.

Today was another beautiful day here in the Khumbu Valley of Nepal. So we spent the morning practicing technical skills in the training zone on the outskirts of base camp (4600m/15,100ft). We practiced fixed-line ascent and descent techniques. The team did really well! And then we spent the afternoon resting.

Tomorrow, we will play it by ear. It looks like some snow is coming our way as a result of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal. So depending on how much snow falls, we may head out for an acclimatization hike, or maybe we’ll just hunker down in base camp and wait out the weather.

Today we also did another day of cleanup. Our crews picked up about 20 kilos of trash from above base camp and up toward the base of the ridge below Camp 2 (5980m/19,619ft). So that feels good and we’ll keep working on that as the expedition progresses!

We’ll be in touch tomorrow.

Our climber, Calvin, getting ready to rappel.

Good times in high places!

Our climber, Naomi, practicing technical skills at the foot of Ama Dablam.

In addition to these expedition dispatches, you can also follow our teams as they make their attempts on the world’s most formidable mountains on:

– Amazon Alexa devices with the Madison Mountaineering Flash Briefing skill:

• Enable the skill and add to your flash briefing to hear our daily audio expedition updates on select expeditions.  Just say, “Alexa, play my flash briefing.“

– Instagram:

• @MadisonMtng
• @GarrettMadison1
• @terray_s