Dispatches - Everest for Altruvest

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Saturday, May 27, 2006

Rob and Katrina at the summit

We have arrived safely down to Lobuche (which is just below Base Camp) and we are now making arrangements to get transportation to Katmandu.

Everyone is healthy and doing well and still enjoying the 'high' of having summitted Everest.

Katrina and I very much appreciate all of the support that everyone has been giving us, following our climb on our web-site. We really appreciated everyone's kind encouragement during our climb of Mount Everest. We have now successfully climbed the Seven Summits and are looking forward to getting back home and catching up with everyone as soon as possible.

We did dedicate our climb to Altruvest, and if anyone would like to make a contribution to the Altruvest Vision Fund which will become an endowment to ensure that Altruvest can continue to build tools for charities for many generations to come, we would really appreciate you doing so on the web-site or calling us directly if you prefer.

We would like to take this opportunity to again, thank everyone for their support of our climb - it was an absolutely fabulous experience and we are convinced that your good wishes brought us good luck and good weather which made our summit possible.

We look forward to seeing you all very soon.

Rob and Katrina

Friday, May 26, 2006

Team Canada at Base Camp

We had a long day descending from Camp 2 down through the icefall today and have made it safely to Base Camp. Our bodies are tired from the climb but everyone is doing well and very much looking forward to coming home.

We will rest at Base Camp tonight before leaving tomorrow for our walk down to Lobuche, where we will spend one night. Our plan is to take the chopper out to Kathmandu the next morning.

It has been an incredible journey, which I look forward to sharing with everyone at home. Thank you again to our wonderful sherpas, guides, and all our supporters.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

We got up very early this morning again to try to miss the sun's heat. We climbed all the way down to Camp 2, which is where we are now. Tomorrow we will be climbing all the way down to Base Camp, where we can start to recover.

Final Summit Push Recap

We left early in the morning on May 21st from Camp 2 and climbed to Camp 3, where we went on supplementary oxygen. The oxygen helped us get a good night's sleep at Camp 3 and we got up very early the next morning to go to Camp 4.

We climbed over the Yellow Band Rock, then up and over the Geneva Spur, which put us up at 8,000 m. We were on oxygen the whole time to help keep our heads clear. We were thrilled when we arrived Camp 4, which we did not reach last year. As we carefully watched the weather and let our bodies adjust to the new altitude, we decided that it would be best to take a rest day so we stayed at Camp 4 for two nights.

At 8:30 p.m. on our second night at Camp 4, we decided that we would leave because the weather was good. We started climbing the big ice bulge, up the Triangular Face, and we arrived at The Balcony (at 12:40 a.m.), where we expected to arrive at 5:00 a.m., way ahead of schedule since we were all feeling very strong.

The next goal was the South Summit. The South Summit was absolutely gorgeous, climbing through the night where we could see millions of the stars and the Milky Way as well as the lightning storms way down below us over Kathmandu. The moon rose at about 4:00 a.m.

We had a magnificent sunrise during our climb to the South Summit. We were fortunate to be blessed with good weather - it stayed clear; none of the clouds came up; and it was relatively not windy (winds can reach up to 100 kn., which is 190 km/hr). Once we got to the South Summit, it was very exciting to see the whole ridge. It took about another hour and half to the Hillary Step. We were lucky that the Hillary Step had a lot of snow on it so it was easier to climb. We then crossed the ridge, which is a snow cornice, to the summit.

The summit was full of prayer flags because sherpas were able to summit this year and they believe heavily in the goddess that is at the top of Everest. We took some photographs before going back down. We made our way down in really good time and arrived back at Camp 4 by 10:30 a.m. It was a 14 hour day, which was reasonably fast. At Camp 4, we rested and hydrated.