Sunday, September 12, 2010

FTA Cho Oyu 2010 In Base Camp!

From Stu in the USA Office
September 12, 2010

Cho Oyu Team in Base Camp

Our team is now safely settled into the official Cho Oyu BC at 5700mm and everyone is feeling well and ready for a well earned day of rest and relaxing tomorrow. Having completed the long journey to base camp, our team can finally leave behind the worries of travel, landslides, border crossing, permits and the like and focus on the objective before them. Some 3500 vertical meters of climbing now stands between our crew and the top of the 6th highest peak on the planet. With good luck they will begin to make an acclimatization run to C1 on Tuesday and make the first steps onto the 8,201m peak. We'll look forward to following their progress and hope for good weather and good conditions!






Fabrizio has left a Gabcast dispatch in which he notes that there are quite a few expeditions in BC and a few more still to come. Among the expeditions are lots of friends from previous expeditions including our Makalu trip last spring and our Broad Peak expedition this past summer. Sounds like it should be a nice and friendly atmosphere for our crew.


Gabcast! Field Touring Alpine Audio Dispatches #106





Ahead of Schedule

Fabrizio also mentioned that they had great fortune in getting their yaks on time and did not end up spending too many nights in Chinese BC (CBC) waiting for them. This can happen in some years when there are many groups arriving at the same time the demand for yaks is very high. The need to acclimatize for more than one night in CBC is limited so extra nights there essentially go against spare summit days. In 2008 and 2007 our teams had at least two nights and took the time to make acclimatization walk high in the barren hills near CBC.



What this means for our team is that they are now 2-3 days ahead of schedule and this will give them more time for acclimatizing rest between runs up Cho Oyu. As the BC is so high members typically need more rest between acclimatization trips and a longer rest before a summit bid.

We’ll expect to hear every few days from Fabrizio by Gabcast and will post them here!

Upcoming Trips Reminder

We have spaces still on the following confirmed trips:

• Nov 4, 2010 climb on Ama Dablam & Island Peak (with Fabrizio)
• Nov 4, 2010 Everest BC trek (with Island Peak option)
• Dec 11, 2010 Aconcagua False Polish (with Ben Kane)
• Jan 10, 2010 Aconcagua False Polish (with Fabrizio)
• Dec 18, 2010 Aconcagua Polish Climb (with Fabrizio)
• Jan 5 Ecuador Volcanoes – Cotopaxi (with Brad Boehringer)

We have lots more trips filling up to Aconcagua, Ecuador, Kilimanjaro, Denali (upper West Rib), Nanga Parbat, Broad Peak, K2 BC and more!

Visit the FTA site www.fieldtouring.com or drop us a note at info@fieldtouring.com for more!

No comments: