I can’t tell you how strange \/ tense it is sitting at basecamp living this summit bid through tiny bits of radio communication.<\/p>\n
Base camp is pretty deserted as most of the climbers are on the mountain.<\/p>\n
Billi set off with the ‘strong’ group of climbers this morning, well last night, at 11:30pm. The weather was reportedly cold, clear and slightly windy.<\/p>\n
Climbers from this group summitted one by one this morning with the first arriving at 6:05am. The was little news of Billi as she was the slower of the fast group (and they must be fast). Billi reached the South Summit at somewhere between 8 and 8.15 where oxygen cyclinders are exchanged and climbers get an extra boost.<\/p>\n
Still no Billi on the radio.<\/p>\n
At around 9.25 Billi had made the Hillary step and had to pause a while because of ‘traffic’. At 9.36, while I was looking through books for a picture of Everest to know where the South Summit and H step were, there was news that Billi had made the summit.<\/p>\n
Still no Billi on the radio.<\/p>\n
At 9.43 I sent a brief and general love and congratulations to her from all at basecamp and all of you readers, knowing that if she was too tired to talk, she could hear. At 9.44 Russel Brice came ont he radio saying that “You might want to wait ’til she gets there, she’s still got 10 or 20 ft to go.” Picture that in your mind!<\/p>\n
And then, around 9.45, Billi summitted.<\/p>\n
“Thank you so much for your help. I never thought I’d be here. It was bloody hard work.”<\/p>\n
If you can imagine the English queen giving a short speech on the radio, that’s how it sounded.<\/p>\n
So, the top is only half way of course. But the weather is stable, the sherpas and guides have been incredibly strong this morning, Russel’s management is very strong too (he can see what people are doing via the 4 discovery head-cams, one of which is pointed on Billi from her climbing sherpa partner’s helmet). So half way (2 hours ago now), in expert hands and things are looking good. All being well she will return to camp 4 today.<\/p>\n
I’ll return now to basecamp and follow progress and bring back another update sometime this evening or afternoon. In about 5 or 6 hours at least.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, you may want to view these sites as they (maybe) updated by satillite phone from basecamp. Both are Billi’s teammates.
\nhttp:\/\/alpenglowexpeditions.com\/blog\/
\nhttp:\/\/www.vmeverest09.com\/<\/p>\n
Til later..<\/p>\n
Rich<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I can’t tell you how strange \/ tense it is sitting at basecamp living this summit bid through tiny bits of radio communication. Base camp is pretty deserted as most of the climbers are on the mountain. Billi set off with the ‘strong’ group of climbers this morning, well last night, at 11:30pm. The weather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-billi-bierling-everest-diary-2009","entry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prVG2-8M","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billibierling.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billibierling.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billibierling.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billibierling.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billibierling.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/billibierling.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billibierling.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billibierling.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billibierling.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}