News from Valery Babanov

Valery Babanov’s messages were delivered with the satellite phone provided by BASK – General Sponsor of the expedition:

Good day, friends!
Today is the 14th of May. Yesterday we descended from South Face of Nuptse where we spent five days. It was a push to the summit but we had not reached the top. Descent itself took two days. On the day of final summit bid we were terminated with weather. At that moment we were at 7450 m and only 400 meters were left up to an apex. We descended under permanent snowfall with avalanche accompaniment. We were lucky enough to save ourselves in a bergshrund, where we made a bivy. On the 11th of May we were able to continue our return and at 6900 m we saw two tents of Kammerlander’s team that was preparing for an assault too (now they are waiting a storm through in the base camp). At 8 p.m. of the very day we were at our base camp; absolutely exhausted but happy to be safe. Now our genial cook Pasang is feeding us after multi-days fastening. Today evening we hope to go down to Chukung village (4700 m) and spend a night there to recover completely. Tomorrow we’ll be back to our base camp and in a pair of day we plan to attempt the summit once again. All for today.
Valera, Volodya, Nuptse East base camp, 14th of May, 2003.

19.05.2003