SummitClimb AMA DABLAM 2004: Dispatch Four and Five

Ama Dablam copyright Dan Mazur

Dispatch 4 and 5: International Ama Dablam Expedition 2004 - Dispatch 30/Sept/04

Dear EverestNews.com readers, Our Leaders-in-Training Program is under full swing on this expedition and going very well. We have three candidates - Anthony Truscott of Melbourne, Australia, Jason Thomas of Anchorage, Alaska, and Mark Jensen of London, England.

Anthony is an avid rock climber and has recently completed an Outdoor Leadership course. Jason is a Mountain Guide working on Denali and has decided to try his hand at Himalayan climbing, and Mark is a rock and ice climber and has done many routes in the Alps. We certainly welcome their experience and input into the expedition!

Find out more about our Leader-in-Training Program by visiting our website, www.summitclimb.com and following the links to the Leader-in-Training page!

4 more arrivals today - Paul Fitzpatrick from New York, USA, David Carr from France and the UK, Derek Tole from Bristol, England and Pierre Jordache or "Jordie" from Quebec, Canada.

Our progress in getting our 3000kg of food and equipment to Lukla has been slow - mostly due to the weather being too bad to land small aeroplanes. Yesterday, there was a weather break and planes took off from Kathmandu to Lukla, only to discover the first plane of the morning had trouble with landing gear and crashed on the airstrip in Lukla. Luckily, no one was injured, but the wrecked plane is still blocking the strip.

More news tomorrow!

Thank you for reading our dispatches, from Jay Reilly and all of us at summitclimb.com

International Ama Dablam Expedition 2004, Dispatch - 01/Oct/04

Dear fellow adventurers,

We are pleased to announce the official start date of our expedition today and we welcome some more team members.

Hello to Herve Coron of Paris, France, Allan Ewert of Indiana, USA, Wanda Neste of Canada, and Adam Shepard of Sydney, Australia.

It seems the weather in Lukla is still too bad to fly and the damaged plane is still blocking the runway, so in order to send our massive amounts of food and equipment, Murari Sharma from Parivar Trekking booked a helicopter and we managed to get a flight to Lukla. Whew!

Jason and Anthony have been hard at work the last couple of days, checking over member equipment to ensure everybody has the correct things. It's a little late to discover that crampons don't fit boots at Basecamp!

Everything is starting to happen very quickly now and everybody is very excited at the possibility of leaving Kathmandu to begin our trek! We have our expedition dinner tonight at a Tibetan restaurant. The food there is very good - we have had to sample it several times over the last few days. It's a hard job, but someone has to do it!

More news soon.

Thank you for reading our dispatches, from 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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