Samagaon

Nine helicopter loads delivered the Manaslu expedition team safely to Samagaon today. The members enjoyed incredible views during their flight to this small village at the base of the mountain. The team of 34 spent the day settling into camp, meeting the Sherpa team, and completing their equipment checks. The weather was good, (no rain) but still cloudy so they have yet to experience their first glimpses of the eighth highest mountain in the world, an impressive sight!

We just received a satellite call from Adrian, with the team in the village of Samagaon, at 11,500ft on the flanks of Mt Manaslu.  It sounds like they had an interesting helicopter ride in.  On the first day that the monsoon broke, the helicopter only managed a couple of flights, so instead of getting all the team and their gear in, the team arrived but the gear didn't!  It took another 24hrs for the weather to break enough to get another couple of flights and all the gear.  The Sherpa have also been late trekking in from their village, the swollen rivers making the trip

Let the Manaslu dispatches begin! We have been in Nepal for 5 rainy days now, and I am excited to report things are really getting going now. Yesterday we left Kathmandu and said goodbye to espresso machines, fast easy internet, and afternoons at the pool. It is time to go climbing! We took a short 40 minute flight in our own private 12-seater prop plane to the town of Pokhara in Western Nepal. It was hard to imagine the Himalaya existed in the clouds and rain, and when we met up with our sherpa team, we found out they have been waiting 4 days for the big Russian helicopters to fly.

Hard to believe it has already been two weeks since our Manaslu team met for the first time in Kathmandu. The last two weeks has been a whirlwind of organizing gear and people, and progressively moving from Kathmandu to Pokhara to Samagaon to Manaslu Basecamp, and finally onto the mountain itself. Here are a few highlights from these last fourteen days that now find us poised to begin sleeping and climbing high on the hill.