SummitClimb AMA DABLAM 2004: Summits and Summit attempts!

Ama Dablam copyright Dan Mazur

Dispatch 11: International Ama Dablam Expedition 2004

Dear EverestNews.com readers,

Our apologies for the long time between dispatches. A lot has happened in the last week. Firstly though - this will be one of the final written dispatches for this expedition. Further dispatches will be made by satellite telephone and recorded by EverestNews.com. They will be available as an audio mp3 file for you to listen to! Pretty exciting huh? I'll try to make them as interesting as possible and not say "um" too many times! Go to www.everestnews.com and follow the links to SummitClimb.com Ama Dablam 2004.

OK - back to the news. All our members have finished their acclimatization climbs up to Camp 2 and are either in the first stages of their summit bid, or the final stages of resting. We have 4 teams this year:-

Team 1 - Mark Jensen (Leader), Fabrice, Herve, Marc, Paul Fitzpatrick, Jordy, Kay and Till. Team 1 is climbing to Camp 2 today and are planning to summit on the 22nd.

Team 2 - Jason Thomas (Leader), Adam, Dave, Wanda, Derek, Paul and Simon. Team 2 is climbing to Camp 1 today and are planning to summit on the 23rd.

Team 3 - Jay Reilly (Leader), Rex, Ken, Guan, Johan. Team 3 is resting in ABC today and are planning to summit on the 24th.

Team 4 - Anthony Truscott (leader) Elselien, Vincent, Caroline. Team 4 is resting in BC today and are planning to summit on the 25th.

In other news, Dan and Tom summited on the 19th at approx 11.30am, and are now safely back in Basecamp. Max summited today at approx 12.00pm and is on his way to Camp 1. Bad news for another team on the mountain -on the 18th, 8 people climbed to the summit in perfect weather, only to be turned back 200m from the summit because the leader forgot to bring enough rope to fix the whole route! Unfortunately they had no time for a second try, because their yaks were coming the very next morning. Needless to say, the team was very upset, and we send our condolences to them. Luckily for us, our 6 leaders and nine Sherpas have worked slowly, carefully, and diligently, and have now fixed and refixed and inspected every inch of the route from camp 1 to the summit and there are now more than 2500 meters of top quality climbing rope in place from camp 1 all the way to the summit, and we are proud to say that the route is in the best shape it has ever been, thanks to Sterling Ropes!

Some minor emergencies here also. Pemba Sherpa, our camp 1 veteran cook had his hand crushed by a rock while he was making a new dining area in Camp 1.

He suffered some cuts on his fingers, deserving 7 stitches and a suspected broken middle finger. A member of the Basque Expedition suffered quite severe HACE and came staggering into our Basecamp. He was treated with an injection of Dexamethasone and sent down with some teammates. We are sad to say farewell to Alan Ewert. He left the expedition a few days ago with suspected HAPE. Thanks to our team Doctor and strong climber from Bristol, Derek Tole, of the Bristol Eye Infirmary, for a fine job in patching people back together during our climb. We hope to bring you more news in a few days time with summit success from Team 1 and further updates on the other teams, and thank you for following our expedition.

From Jay Reilly, Daniel Mazur, and all of us at SummitClimb.com.

Summitclimb's LAST EXPEDITION SUCCESSFULLY AND SAFELY CLIMBED AMA DABLAM, PLACING 14 MEMBERS AND 5 SHERPAS ON THE SUMMIT.

This Autumn AMA DABLAM LEADERSHIP TEAM: Dan Mazur is the expedition leader. He has recently been running Glacier Schools, working at his building design job, along with doing a bit of additional climbing and training. Dan has climbed Ama Dablam 5 times, as well as leading and organizing more than 25 expeditions to the Himalaya, with safe and succesful ascents of such peaks as Everest, Pumori, Mustagata, Cho Oyu, K2, Lhotse, Kangchenjunga, Makalu, Gasherbrum 1, and many, many others. The other expedition leader Jay Reilly has recently been climbing peak Khan Tengri in Kazakhstan. Jay has climbed Ama Dablam three times. Recently, Jay has taken on a new roll at SummitClimb.com, that of training director for our new leaders-in-training programme. The expedition will also be accompanied by our leaders-in-training and assistant leaders.

AMA DABLAM, coming Soon!

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