Dear Friends,

We had another beautiful day here in the Khumbu. Today was sort of an “extra” day that we had built in for flying weather but happily did not need it. The other western climbing instructors, some of our Nepali climbing staff, and myself went to the ice climbs. We discovered that several are much thinner than normal and one has virtually no ice so will not be useable for climbing. However, after a bit of snooping around Andy did locate a new spot that we’ll check out carefully in a couple of days.

The next two days involve an instructor’s workshop where we’ll focus on safety issues, freshening up the skills of our instructors, reviewing material, some climbing, etc. Both days will be field days and it will be good to have our team out together. There will be nearly 25 of us total. The majority of the climbing instruction is done by Nepali instructors, something we are all quite proud of.

Yesterday afternoon when we entered the village for the first time a group of local KCC instructors greeted us with khatas, ceremonial silk scarves. I’ve attached a photo of the group.

I have intended to write more each day but we’ve been extremely busy. I do believe that as we get settled in things should ease just a bit for me. We’ll see.

All the best,

Steve