大象传媒

Our Illustrious Leader

• Mike Grocott
• 27 Sep 06, 04:57 AM

Today we are heading back up the mountain. Five days of snow produced by the sort of storm that comes long every five to ten years took us to the nadir of our expectations yesterday. Today dawned brighter but many of the big teams are moving out – nobody has yet reached even to camp 3.

After an excellent acclimatisation program and having achieved virtually all our scientific goals it now looks like reaching the summit is a distant prospect. Heavy snow and high winds have prevented anyone climbing anywhere near the summit and now conditions are poor with a short weather window at the weekend followed by high winds next week.

Everyone is felling good – nearly a week of scrabble, trivial pursuit and card games with unprintable names along with endless DVDs seems to have caused no harm and this is one of the happiest expeditions I can remember (depsite the conditions). The next few days will allow us to test some of the science kit higher on the mountain and retrieve our gear from the various camps. The chances of a summit bid being safe are probably less than 5%.

Meanwhile we continue with our diaries and strange experimental requests. Mike Stroud is carrying two raw eggs up to camp 2 in the hope of conducting a world first stomach emptying study at that altitude. Hopefully they will not break!!