Today the weather broke, around noon the tents became like saunas! Bora, Soner, Dawa, Sherap and Dorje Sherpas made use of this oppourtunity by climbing up the little glacier walls with axe and crampon. The rest of the team enjoyed the heat in the tents. In the afternoon, when the sun went away everything turned back to its previous state. According to the information we received, it is going to snow for another several days.

We are waiting for the weather to break, a classic of Everest climbs. The date to ascend to 7000 meters depends on the weather conditions, we are waiting at our camp at 6400 meters. From time to time we are entertaining guests, from time to time we withdraw into our tents and read books. Backgammon, sudoku and logic puzzles are the most popular freetime activities, and of course after our meals to enhance our breathing we play the game of finding a song beginning with a certain word a lot. The sherpas, the cooks and Pepe are a bit suffering from this, but what can we do!

Today's dispatch is from a Brazilian friend that we met at the advanced base camp:

"I am really happy being here at Everest ABC again. Waiting for good weather for me is a mind exercise! I’d like to go to other mountain, like Cho Oyo, to acclimatize and then get here just to the summit bid but the money was impeditive.

I like to think Everest as being Chomolungma, the goddess of the universe, as Tibetans say. This is a huge mountain and we need to respect it a lot and the environment.

These snowy days could be boring if we don’t fight against it. We can play, talk and meet people like your group, so nice and friendly. In a two-hour meeting we can share a lot of culture, way of lives, climbing trips. We learn a lot in suck situations. So thank you for receiving us so well and I wish you good time and success on this expedition.

Rodrigo Raineri - Brazil"

Finally the weather broke down! It is snowing since yesterday night. Snow is added on to our ongoing struggle with the altitude. This situation effects our climbing plans, too, naturally. For the next stage, which is climbing the Northern col at 7000 meters, we’ll have to wait for the snowfall to stop and then for the accumulated snow to settle down. Actually our hasn’t changed much. We were planning to spend several days at this camp, this period has increased a bit.

Our days here are becoming quite routine. Besides to eating, drinking and sleeping we are busy with arranging the camping site. And of course, we have duties as setting up the energy systems, keeping the computers running and preparing the stuff to be send for the website. As our connection credits are limited we first download the messages that arrived to our website and we read them in a bulk. Part of our table chats consists of these messages, and the rest are our ‘blue voyage’* plans!

*A famous type of holiday in Turkey where you spend 2 or 3 weeks on  a boat  going from one bay to another on the Eagen coast of Turkey.

The struggle with the altitude goes on! We are at the fourth day at the 6400 meters, and we try to spend time with methods enhancing the adaptation. At this altitude it is inevitable to have problems at a certain rate, what we try to do is to overcome these problems as lightly as possible and to speed up the acclimatization. For this, first of all we came here stage by stage, we spend two nights at the intermediate camp at 5800 meters. On the other hand, the sherpas spent only one night at the intermediate camp and ascended to 6400 meters. Our method on this is unfortunately confirmed very quickly. Presently, three of our sherpas and our cook went back to the base camp as they got sick. Our strategy after arriving at 6400 meters is this; not sleeping after 8-10 hours of our arrival here, drinking a lot of fluids and to be careful to breath in deeply. The days afterwards, getting used to the altitude by controlled and slow physical activities, lots of liquid, good feeding and lots of breathing in.

As can be understood, the altitude can turn the daily activities into an endeavour in itself. From your feeding habits to your breathing in, each needs to be taken care of by itself. Our daily activities are completely arranged as for the aim of adapting and getting used to this altitude. The adaptation period of the team is progressing quite well. We are 11 people at the advanced base camp, our friend Mustafa who is responsible of the documentaries is at the base camp. We thought that it is yet early for him to come to this altitude.

We almost completely set up the advanced base camp. We are working wonders in communication, energy and other technologic stuff. Unfortunately, electronic devices aren’t as successful as we are in adapting to the altitude and cold temperature! One of our computers is dead already, and to keep the other warm we have to invent various new ways. We have to be careful in using efficiently our energy needs and our already limited communication possibilities. Both the web site and the videophone connection possibility are as valuable as oxygen here. That’s why we are trying hard to keep them working as much as we do for getting used to the altitude, these days.