Don's Home Team Reports:

Don phoned to say that he, Alexey, and all climbers who summited with him have returned safely to base camp.

July 1, 2010

 Even though Alexey and I knew that the weather was going to be bad, our goal was to try to push as high as we could toward Camp 2 on GI. Our first push got us to Camp 1 at 5926m. We spent a day acclimatizing there which means we spent 2 nights. We got up yesterday morning after the second night here and even though visibility was extremely poor, winds were high, and it was snowing, we made our way up along the glacier and up the ice fall towards Camp 2. We understand that Camp 2 is about 6500 m, but we haven’t made it there yet. Last night we camped just below Camp 2 about 6400m. Even though the weather is really bad with blowing snow and high winds, we don’t mind very much because we are dressed warm in our mountain gear and can get warm in the tent

 There is a ton of snow up here and it has filled in the crevasses. We’ve hit a few small ones, but nothing very big. Today we went up another 100m and think we found the way up into the pass.

 We feel satisfied that we have reached this high on GI and spent a good amount of time acclimatizing on the mountain. Tomorrow morning we will pack up, leave a stash of gear here, and head back down to Camp 2 and then to Base Camp where we plan to rest for a few days.

“Retreat: The Summit attack halted by the weather” reported Artur Hajzer on his website:

Artur continues to say that, “According to forecast from Meteo Institute till March 21 2009, which is end of the winter, there won't be the weather allowing attacking Broad Peak Summit. There will be heavy wind blowing up to 100 km per hour on summit level. Not having much of a choice, in the situation,  HiMountain Expedition decided to terminate the siege and to terminate the operation. Camp and base liquidation has started.”

”8.000 m Karakorum summits remain still unreachable during winter. Climbers have been trying at least for 20 years. Will anyone success in the future?”

Don's Webteam: Don is in base camp at the moment. He will send out a dispatch soon.

For those of you who receive our dispatch announcements via email, we once again apologize for sending out some of Don's old dispatches along with Don's first dispatch from Broad Peak.  We thought the problem with our automated system, Feedburner, was fixed, but apparently not.  Therefore, we have dismantled it and will be sending out future dispatches with a new system. Watch for Don's latest dispatch coming up soon!