Kathmandu

Yes, its back to Everest time. Talk about deja vu. Same city, same hotel, same mountain, same objective. I’d better finish it this time or I’ll run out of things to say.

For the uninitiated, the plan is Everest via the north ridge (Tibet side), solo without oxygen, I had a go at this last year but it was cold. Who would have thought? Actually its always cold but summit day 2011 was colder and a whole lot windier than forecast, so that was that. Read the preceeding despatches for the whole story if you haven’t anything better to do.

I’m going from the north side because I’ve climbed it from the south side twice before and I’m looking for a different view. And I’m climbing without gas becasue I climbed all the other 8000ers without gas, so I’d like to do Everest that way also. Solo because I forgot to ask anyone else if they wanted to go.

No pictures in this first despatch as I haven’t learned how to use my new camera. But look at the pictures from my first despatch last year and you’ll get the idea. I’ll be sure to add a few to the next despatch from basecamp.

Its about 8 days to basecamp and then a couple of days to setup, so I’ll send something after that.

Thanks for your interest.
Andrew