New audio update from TA on Everest.

This is the text of TA’s audio message:

Hi this is TA calling in from Everest base camp; I just wanted to give you all an update.  We are not moving up tomorrow morning, I think in my career as an outdoor educator the ‘go’, ‘no go’ decisions are some of the hardest to make, and I don’t envy Tim in has role as expedition leader.  He has to amalgamate data from several different weather forecasts from around the world, talk to different teams, and try to get a sense of how long a summit window might last.  The window we were aiming for on the 16th was pretty darn small with high winds and low temperatures, -27 or -29 on either side of that window.  Even the winds during the window come with an extreme risk of frostbite, so for us in team 2 it would have meant 5 days of very intense moving.  So we are on a watch and wait, waiting on the next window, looks like that might be around the 22nd.  As of yesterday morning we had been aiming for the 20th.  It’s a bit of a yo-yo with emotions going up and down, thinking yes we are going, no were not, yes we are.  I know for me, in a premenstrual state today I had an intuitive sense that it didn’t make sense to go.  I was wrestling with what I would do if the team was a go and I was not a go.  But as it turns out it’s a no go for all of us on team 2, and it sounds likely that team 1 will be coming back down from camp 2 tomorrow or in the near future.  So I didn’t want you all thinking I was in the ice fall when I wasn’t, just more watchful waiting here.  Watching for that window, which historically usually comes sometime between the 14th and the 25th.  So patience, patience, patience, as one of my Buddhist slogans goes which ever of the two occurs be patient.  So we are all practicing patience and trying to keep ourselves gamefully occupied, with packing and greeting trekkers and things like that.   Thanks so much for your support and for thinking of me, talk to you tomorrow.

TA