Lucille called early this morning after they made it down to Base Camp.
She let me know what their plans are. Domhnall will leave later tonight or very early in the morning to catch a helicopter ride back to Kathmandu. He will spend hopefully one night, maybe two, before flying to Lukla and hot-footing it up to Everest Base Camp. Domhnall has Base Camp support and a permit to climb Lhotse, which he should be able to do in a single summit push as he is already acclimatised from summitting Manaslu. Yes, it's official, after what he himself described as his hardest day in the mountains, he did successfully sumit Manaslu. Congratulations to him.
Lucille will trek out with the porters and the Italian team and get back to Kathmandu in 3-5 days, where I am sure she is looking forward to that free meal at the Rum Doodle that her Everest summit from 2010 entitles her to. Afterwards, she may also trek up to Everest Base Camp and hopefully her and Domhnall will trek out together after his Lhotse climb.
Afer all of that, Lucille also left this message on the voicemail.
Namaste everybody. This is a followup to my previous podcast. Today was kind of a very different morning, it was the first time that no one was asking "well what's the forecast, what's the forecast?". That was always the first question that always goes around. We have all of these various forecasts, we'd have the German, the Italian, the Polish, and they would all say something different. So one would say, "Oh we're really going to have nice weather for three days", the other one would say, "Oh, worst weather for the next three days, and then it's going to get really nice". No one ever knew really what to do. And then after the question of the forecast was answered then "Oh, what is everbody going to be doing, what is everybody going to be doing?
And so, I look around and I see, you know, how many people there were on this mountain, how few even attempted the summit, and how few of those that attempted actually made the summit. I think I would have been a bit more successful if we'd have had a bit nicer weather so that I could have been a bit better acclimatised. Not being able to go much above Camp 3, which still wasn't very high, it was only 6,800 metres, you know, really didn't help me out. And, of course, not having any Oxygen, that would have helped out as well, but that was a personal choice.
So, right now what we are doing is, we just had some supper, we're getting kind of all packed up and the porters are coming at 8:00 tomorrow morning, which is really, you know, just a few hours sleep from now, and picking us up, picking up our stuff, and then we are heading out to Kathmandu. I will be out of cell service, even email and stuff for the next five days. But I will have the spot, so you can follow that, but Domhnall will have the satellite phone and hopefully he will be doing some updates.
Alright, love to you all, and thanks for listening. Bye.