The plan

This climb is similar in some ways to previous climbs that I have done, and in other ways it will be very different. We will be flying into Kathmandu, leaving Edmonton on April 10th and arriving on April 12th in the evening. After we get a good night's sleep, we should be ready to go first thing on April 13th, doing any organizing and last minute trips to the store to pick up anything we may have forgotten.
We have hired a company to get us and our gear to the base camp of Manaslu which will take anywhere from 6-10 days. This company will provide us with porters to carry our gear, and also will be providing one cook boy to cook for us while we are at base camp and then looking after our gear at base camp while we are on the mountain. We will be carrying all our gear up ourselves, establishing our own camps and cooking our own food while up there, similar to the way we did Denali last spring. The climbing however will be similar to the way we climbed Everest two years ago. We will be spending the minimum amount of time on the mountain, going up and down to acclimatize and returning all the way down to base camp between trips to rest and prevent our bodies from deteriorating too much.
The challenge will be to stay strong and healthy, and try to work with the mountain and the weather to allow a summit. The word is that last winter was very dry, but that there were also fierce windstorms that caused a lot of destruction - lifting roofs and uprooting trees. We will wait and see what the season, the weather and the mountain have in store for us.