Hi Everybody,

It's Cas here, writing from London 24 hours before departing for Kathmandu. Well for those of you who followed my last trek up to Everest basecamp , I'm just as surprised as you to find myself heading back to Nepal only 6 month later.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my office minding my own business,enjoying work etc, when I got an email from Paul Adler and I quote:
"Not sure if this interests you, but I thought I’d let you know about it anyway.  A new adventure company has asked me to organize some trips to Nepal for them, trekking in base camp and climbing Island Peak.  I haven’t climbed Island Peak before, so I have asked them to run a very informal trip to do some trekking (most likely up to base camp, although there is only one expedition there this year) and climb Island Peak.  There is myself leading the trip and 3 members, including the owner of the company.  Anyway, let me know if you are interested."

Well I thought this is not coming at a good time. My wife and children have just recovered from me trekking 1 month in Nepal with 6 women, I really can't put them through all that again. But the urge of doing something with Paul, who I briefly met at EBC just before he headed for his summit bid, was too great. I twisted and turned over it for the next few weeks and weighed up the pros and cons. I also spoke to Paul to see if we could maybe trek into EBC via the Gokyo Lakes. He told me he was interested himself and it might be possible. This was another pro I could add, another one was climbing Island Peak which is reasonably challenging and also has some of the best views in the area.

In the meantime the Australian side of things was getting organised nicely, in what seemed without any of the major dramas I was creating for myself and time came for me to commit. As you read above I will be joining the other 4 in Kathmandu in 2 days time, thanks first of all to my wife and kids understanding ( not agreeing ) that I really wanted to do this although the timing is a bit off. And second to England for beating the Ozzies in the Rugby World Cup. Finally I knew I could join the rest without having to listen how they beat England at this or at that ....endlessly during this trip.

Due to committing so late and also work, training has been sparse and I have only managed to do about 150km of road and mountain biking a week, but I hope the walk to EBC first and a few treks to 5000 plus meters on the way up will prepare me for the final climb up Island Peak.

We are doing this whole thing a few weeks later than normal, which should add to the adventure as the temperatures will probably be much lower than usual when we finally get to Basecamp.

We will try to keep you all posted about any interesting developments on the way and as usual here, you can leave messages, which we will receive daily and I am sure all of us will appreciate greatly.
 
Finally I have to thank my two boys Luca and Stefano for coming up with the title "Five on Island Peak" for our posts....How they thought of it, I dont know but it sounds good :-)

Cheers for now,

Cas