Mt. Everest 2005: Valencia: three climbers and a Sherpa, and he has tried without oxygen.  They almost reached the "Balcony", at 8,500m, and they turned around

Update: Sunday, May 22 "Meeting in BC"

There was a meeting of all the expeditions in BC today, in the little flat of the hospital, where there was the most absurd bazaar yesterday.  Today's meeting was to organize the summit day, because there is still a lot of people today, and they fear crowds in the most conflictive points on the summit day...

Anyway, the meeting was fundamentally for commercial expeditions, to make an agreement between them.  For the small expeditions like ours it was not much relevant.  They also agreed on how to install equipment from the South Col to the summit...

We had planned a few days ago to wait for it to be equipped with fixed lines to be able to climb on the day of the summit, but today we were planning to climb without ropes.  The problem is that when we told our Sherpas, they said that they don't want to climb without fixed lines, that they prefer to wait until it is equipped.  We will see how we do it, but we will find a solution on way or another for the summit day.

We want to say goodbye to our friends from Esplugues, that will leave the Chinese BC tomorrow and will travel to the border of Nepal, to be home in a few days... we envy them!

Haya and David have been with Manolo Sanjuan, a boy from the Valey of Aran that was trying to reach the summit yesterday.  It was a very small group, three climbers and a Sherpa, and he has tried without oxygen.  They almost reached the "Balcony", at 8,500m, and they turned around, because they were very tired...

The truth is that we admire their ascent because, although they didn't reach the summit, they went up to 8,500m with no oxygen, opening the trail and digging out the fixed line...

For the moment we have more humble objectives: to reach the summit of Everest before the monsoon sends us to Katmandu...

We are going to leave you now, the chronicle was long and interesting, but I think the computer wants to go back home, it is bugging from time to time and today it erased almost all the chronicle.

Translated from Spanish by Jorge Rivera

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