Friday, September 5, 2008

FTA Cho Oyu 2008: Visa in hand and off for the border on the 6th!

rom stu in kathmandu
Our members have been asssembling over the last 3 days in Kathmandu this
morning the expeditions got officially under way with a nice meeting with
the legendary Miss Elizabeth Hawley who keeps records on all of the major
climbs occuring in nepal and Tibet. her willingess to share things she has
learned about the climbs and routes always adds to our knowledge and safety
on the hill and we thank her in advance for heer help! After a short welcome
meeting members scattered to allparts of thamel for final shopping before we
reconvened at the hotel to find our visas already approved by the chinese
embassy. having heard of other teams being run through hoops we we held
cautious optimism in Nima T Sherpa of Su-Swagatam Trek that his contacts
could pull off a seemingly impossible task. One again Nima demonstrated why
we call him "the man" and there in black and red ink was our golden Willie
Wonka ticket of which there seem to be very few this year.
After a meeting on nitty gritty items and schedules we talked for a time
about what had brought each of us to this mountain with this group and it
was a great chance to get to knoew each other better and set the tone for a
team experience.
Clearly we will have a different experience this year on Cho Oyu with such a
smaller number of teams and we welcome the chance to enjoy less competition
for space and yet still enjoy meeting up with otyher teams and making the
community to be on th ehill this year a cooperative and successful one.
After months of working on getting our team in the right position to have a
chance to go to Tibet and have a go at Cho Oyu our trip finally became a
reality this morning with the successful granting of visas to all members of
the trip. Our final member arrives on monday and we hope he will be whisked
off to the border after a short time in KTM and make his way to join us in
Nylam that same day. With good luck the entire team will head towards Tingri
together on the 9th and our tentative schedule will look like:
6 to kodari at the border
7 to nylam
8 acclimatizing day in Nylam
9 to Tingri
10 acclimatizing day in Tingri
11 to Chinese BC
12 Acclimatizing day in CBC
13/14 two day trek to ABC
15 rest day in ABC
16 start climbing!
We will pass on word whenever we can and look for an up date in the next ew
days from chris in Kathamndu!
cheers,
stu
 

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