Firat Eren

From a series of dispatches from the Alpine Ascents 2007 Everest Expedition team.

Hello Friends,

We finally made our move up the mountain, and we now have what we call “mountain inertia”. It was a really hot day, probably the hottest day of the expedition, coming up the Lhotse Face with one step, then several breaths, another step, several breaths. . . It was so, so hot. We got a bit of heat exhaustion but we were able to fix that with electrolytes and drinking. It felt like 100 degrees out.

Now we’re all tucked in at Camp 3. We are on ½ liter flow of oxygen tonight. Everybody has great appetites – it makes a huge difference getting to go on oxygen. We all feel a lot better than the last time we were here. We’re really, really excited to be moving up the mountain. It’s like our bodies are moving themselves now. We’re looking forward to tomorrow, to be going up the Yellow Band and the Geneva Spur, heading up to the South Col and spending a rest day there. At the Col we’ll meet up with all of our sherpas, we’ll have a whole rest day there together before heading up for our summit bid. The weather looks like it’s going to hold out really nicely. We’ll let you know tomorrow what we find at the South Col.

Amy Bullard at Camp 3