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News from Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Not a summit day

Information from Wednesday noon

According to news from the base camp, yesterday an international team succeeded in climbing Mount Everest from the north side. About 100 mountaineers, however, had to turn back on the south side because around 1 am in the night, bad weather came. The winds are still to strong for a summit climb - Although the weather forecast predicted the best summit day for Tuesday. The three mountaineers of the German-Swiss Expedition Roland Brand, Frank Everts, and Eckhard Schmitt stayed in the tents in camp 4. Most of the other climbers meanwhile returned to camp 2. Eike Mrosek, Tom Zwahlen, and Christian Rossel are still thinking about an attempt, they are currently in camp 3.
The Indian team wants to force a summit success. This afternoon several Sherpas try to complete the fixed ropes on the South Ridge. Due to the weather, this work couldn't be completed up to now. If the ropes would be fixed soon, the Indian team is planning to go to the summit with at least 3 climbers. According to the Indian weather forecast there should be a short weather window this evening. But this forecast also predicts the Monsoon around May 26. So we just hope that the second forecast simply is wrong as the Monsoon is concerned.
A kind of helplessness is spreading around the teams. Should they go up or down? How will the weather be, what can they dare? Many questions for our mountaineers. Today's weather forecast doesn't promise THE weather, everything could be possible....
In this difficult time of hoping and waiting, Reinhold Messer visited the base camp with his trekking group. According to him, the route should be fixed since a long time.... But he is not up there, so we stick to the information we have from the hight camps. The trekking group had a tour through our base camp by the team: Peter Becker, our base camp doctor, Oliver Häussler, journalist, and Alex Eberhöfer. Anyway they were much delighted by the Swiss Cheese which was amonst others sponsored by Migros.
So we hope that our team will make the right decision, and that the weather at Everest will also give a chance to the mountaineers on the south side. Our team and all the other expeditions surely deserved to have a fair chance.

Information from Wednesday evening

Meanwhile all returned to camp 2. They are waiting for good weather and are discussing how things will go on. The summit moved into a distance again. But there is still a chance - but now everything must be perfect!


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