NEWS: 8th Oct 2006
 
Expedition Update

The team has been packing and travelling non-stop since last Wednesday. On this day we finished packing up Advanced Base Camp and walked down to Intermediate Base Camp. We had organised 46 yaks to carry most of our kit down the mountain. Having set off at around 11am we walked down the mountain straight into a sandstorm. It was not the easy stroll down the mountain we were expecting. We waited for the kit at IBC for hours, as some of the yaks got lost. Half of the team had travelled to the border ahead of us, and their jeep broke down on the way, requiring fixing with araldite! We finally left for the border at around 10pm, arriving at 4am in the morning. We then tucked into the most enormous pile of rice and cabbage.

Rising at 06.30, we had breakfast and prepared to queue to get over the border into Nepal. This took over two hours to get through customs, and then 30 minutes later we had to unpack all kit from our lorries, and get it carried by porters over the true border in the form of a bridge to be packed into different lorries on the other side.

In the middle of the afternoon we finally arrived in Kathmandu, and the lovely Summit Hotel again. The welcome was as exceptional as ever, and Kit, the owner continued to give us huge amounts of help over the following day and a half. This was while we sorted out kit in preparation for shipping home, and carried out some last minute science. That evening we cracked open Champagne left for us by one of our colleagues, and celebrated our safe arrival in Kathmandu. The following day after working hard on kit and science we met our Sherpa team at a Kathmandu party restaurant of their choice, and the partying went on for a very long time. They presented us with white katas for Everest next year, and we presented team members and sherpas with summit certificates. Mac, Denny, Mike G and Kay had to get up after only 3 hours sleep to travel out to the Khumbu valley. They were starting a reconnaissance of tea houses for the trek next year. They faced a day of trekkking which included some beaustiful hills with small hangovers!