The 2026 Madison Mountaineering Ama Dablam expedition is officially underway! The team gathered in Kathmandu over the last few days, going out to tour some of the cities most important religious sites, and getting ready for the expedition to come! With gear checks and an orientation behind them, the team is packing their bags once again and getting ready to fly into the Himalaya tomorrow! Expedition leader, Terray Sylvester checks in with this dispatch from Nepal:
Hello! This is Terray calling in for the autumn, 2026 Madison Mountaineering Ama Dablam (6812m/22,349ft) expedition. Today is October 21st.
Today we kicked off our expedition. Over the last couple of days, our climbers arrived here in Kathmandu (1400m/4,600ft). So today we visited two UNESCO World Heritage sites here in the valley: Boudhanath Stupa and Pashupatinath, the major Buddhist zone in Kathmandu and the most important Hindu temple in the Kathmandu Valley. Then we came back to our hotel, the Yak and Yeti, for our orientation and gear checks. And we just wrapped up dinner at our favorite restaurant here in this part of Kathmandu, Mezze.
Tomorrow morning, we have an early flight scheduled to Lukla (2860m/9,383ft). So hopefully we’ll have great views of the Himalayas during that helicopter ride. It’s just beautiful here in Nepal right now. Today was a really nice, peaceful, sunny day, blue skies. And if we’d been just a little higher up, I think we would have had great views of the Himalayas!
So we’re looking forward to getting the trek to base camp (4600m/15,100ft) underway and we’ll be in touch tomorrow.
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: