BC Birthday
5th May Today was a special day as it was Geordies` 21st birthday. Geordie os the guy from St Andrews who is attempting to be the youngest British 7 summiteer. He`s a very well spoken young man who is a wealth of knowledge on Everest and his beloved Newcastle United. The link with the football team, I don`t understand as he has no history with the city. Anyway he still has his boyish looks and has no facial hair at all, even though like the majority he hasn`t had a shave more a month. We fonud a beard grooming kit which we prsented to him for his b`day. He took in good humour.The cook staff made a cake which was great. We have lost 4 members of the team over the last few days. Don and Scott left due to Don struggling. We all got the oppurtunity to say bye and I told Don, just to be out here at 62 was an acheivement. I respected Scott for his decision to stick with his dad. The importance of them being together was more impotant than the mountain. Jantoon, who at the start of the trip was a really bubbly confident guy found each stage of the acclimatization process a struggle and never got higher than a short walkn from ABC. When I breifly spoke to him he said that he had been planning this for so long and that now he was hear he had actually lost his motivation. I think there was more to it but I wish him well and was sorry to see him leave. Micky, a guy fron New York suddenley decided to leave the day we were going up to the North col with our big packs. He turned around before the head wall and by the time we had reached the top he was on his way down to BC with Jantoon. This is a very tough expedition, and you can not underestimate what Everest will ask of you.I think these guys maybe realised it was getting tougher than they expected. I spoke to Beth, my wife today. She is a wonderful partner in all of this and supports me more than I could never ask for. I draw a great deal of strength from talking my family back home and reading all the comments people post on the Blog so thank you all. I hope sometime over the next few weeks we can give the summit a dam good shot! I spoke to my friends from Montenegro tonight. We exchanged pics of our trip up the North col. They invited me in to there tent and sat and talked with them. They had celebrated Nepalese new year a couple of week ago, with decorations etc. They had a big Montenegran flag at one end. The told me it had been presented to them by the President and he had signed it. They were hoping to take it to the top then present it back to him as the first Montenegrans to summit. It turns out two of them are Firemen. They have a slightly different strategy to ours in the fact that they plan to leave the North col on oxygen. We are starting a little higher at 7500m. They spent one night at 7100 were we spent 2. I think we are likely to be on the mountain at about the same time. They are thinking around the 16th to the 20th May. It`s all weather dependant now so we will just wait and see.