Tonight’s the Night!

This is it.  Because, tonight’s the night the past seven weeks in Nepal and preceding months of planning, preparing, and training have been building up to.  We go for the summit of Everest tonight!!!  It’s now morning in Nepal and the team will be spending the day resting and getting psyched for the final push up to the summit.  So, from the home office in Seattle, WA USA and from friends, family, and well-wishers all over the world we say, Go get it team – climb strong, be careful, make your mark and get up and down safely! Here’s Garrett Madison on the South Col of Mount Everest via satellite phone just minutes ago with today’s expedition dispatch:

Hello, this is Garrett calling in for the Everest team!  We are up at the South Col, high camp, on Mount Everest – nearly 26,000ft. or 8000m.  Everybody is doing great!  We got up here yesterday evening, had a nice dinner, tucked into our tents, and had a restful night sleeping on oxygen.  Today we just had breakfast, we’re up, moving around, sleeping, resting, breathing oxygen.

 

We are planning to leave this evening at 9:00 PM for our summit attempt.  Hopefully reaching the top the next morning, which will be May 23rd.  So, everybody’s doing great up here, the team did excellent coming up to high camp yesterday.  Everyone’s doing great today, in good sprits and we’re looking forward to leaving tonight and giving it our best shot to climb to the top of the world!  Alright, thanks for checking in!  We’ll call in tomorrow.  All’s well here at high camp on Mount Everest.

(photo:  2018 Everest Camp 4 from the Madison Mountaineering archives)