April 15, 2001

Happy Easter to everybody back home. Today both Phil and Walter headed back down to Base Camp because Phil cannot seem to shake the headaches that he gets everyday. He’s doing OK; it’s nothing to worry about. However, he does want to take some time off and rejuvenate the engines. Walter had a bad day yesterday, so he’s going to go down today with Phil. Overall he’s doing OK too.

Mike and I are going to stay up here for approximately three days. We’re going to try to push a load up to the Col tomorrow, weather permitting. And the next day, also if weather permits, we’ll try to push another load up to the Col. We hope to get our tents, fuel, and oxygen canisters up there.

Expeditions like this are extremely difficult when the weather turns bad. The last five days we really haven’t been able to get much accomplished because of the avalanche dangers and the snow conditions. Today we had blizzard conditions for a very short period of time. The wind would gust up and almost knock you down. But today isn’t actually a bad day. The sun does come out every now and then, but we do have a low cloud cover over Everest, and we can barely see the top of the Col.

Otherwise, everything is going well and we hope to start making some progress up this mountain. It’s hard to sit in the tent reading books and playing cards because there are a lot of things we’d like to be doing other than laying around and telling stories.

We’re going to try to get some photos out courtesy of the Australian Army Alpine Expedition. We’ve blown some fuses on our equipment, and the Australians have graciously offered to lend us there’s. So look for those in the next couple of days.

Tim Boelter
2001 British American Lightweight Everest Expedition