I don't have time to write a summary now. I will try tomorrow - but I summited Everest on May 23 at 10am Nepal time. It was a tough 6-7 day assault and was not exactly easy. Anyway, I just arrived in Base Camp today and I am recovering from a very long last few days. I still have 10 fingers and 10 toes in good condition. Some sunburn on the face, and the normal Khumbu cough...

Well since there are already many teams on the mountain, some trying to summit today, and our first team left 2 days ago, I can now tell you that my team will leave at midnight tonight to leave for Camp 2 from Base Camp. We are leaving 2 1/2 hours earlier than the first team, as it took some of them 10 hours to get to Camp 2 and they found the going very hard when the sun hit them on the Western Cwm. Isn't it amazing that at 20,000 feet plus on Mt Everest, that the temperature can be 100-105 degrees F or higher on the Cwm. So hot that you almost melt into the snow and ice you are standing on! So our team will leave earlier to try to avoid that, although I am not looking forward to a 10 hour climb to start a 7 day summit attempt for sure. But there is no way around it. Today I tested my oxygen system to make sure it was working properly and I will spend the rest of the afternoon packing my backpack, unpacking it, and repacking it. My brand new Petzl latest version headlamp died yesterday - an internal cable broke. Very poor design; it sort of makes me mad that companies like Petzl who are supposed to make the highest quality tools for the most extreme environments, can't create a well engineered wire connection to a battery pack. I had to borrow one from someone else who had a spare. Its not the sort of thing I need the very day I leave for a summit bit of Mt. Everest. Anyway, I need to go now, as I really do have to go over my gear - decide how many pairs of gloves I need to carry, how many spare batteries and whatever else has to be done. Its a bit hard to make these decisions, as once you leave, you have what you have and there is nothing to be done. On the other hand, there is no way I am carrying a ton of stuff up that hill, just in case I need it. Even the toothbrush and toothpaste may be left behind I think

Rest days

Rest days

Rest day. Sunny, beautiful day! Today there was a long guides meeting after breakfast where the final summit teams were selected and the dates defined. I can't divulge right now what the details are, but we are now all quite relieved as we know exactly when we are going for the summit and who our guides and teams are. There is much conjecture around the entire base camp as to when everyone is going. So we have been told that we cannot at this time divulge our teams plans. We understand that there are around 300-400 climbers at least maybe 500 at base camp. On top of that an almost equivalent number of Sherpas and guides. So, it's going to be crowded going for the summit. I did see about 30 people going up the icefall at 6 am this morning, so they are either Sherpas taking loads, or climbers going for the summit now. Since we have 22 climbers left (5 dropped out, 1 already summited) we have 6 less to fit onto the teams. So that makes it moderately better in terms of Sherpas-to-member ratio since we have, I think, 29 Sherpas on our team.

One thing is for sure, we now have all firmly set our eyes on one task, and one task only - our summit attempt. For the last 44 days since we left Kathmandu, the only task we have been set was to become acclimatized to the high altitude. Several (5 actually) for one reason or another were unable to acclimatize or decided not to continue this venture. It is psychologically very hard indeed to spend so long in preparation and much of the time just waiting around doing nothing. The trick is to acclimatize but not lose so much weight and muscle that you get weaker and weaker. So, that is why we went up to Camp 3 but did not stay there. Even at Camp 2, it is thought that you move over the balance where you lose body mass at a faster rate than you can gain it. So, Base Camp is apparently neutral, although I figure I have lost about 15 lbs so far. The way I look at it, it makes my backpack 15 lbs lighter! We have been resting, literally using as few calories as possible, and eating as much as possible every day. Most days, I have no problem eating 3 meals a day. Its always eggs and toast, often with bacon and beans for breakfast, and lunch is usually a salad, potatoes, veggies, and a variety of additional things such as canned fish. Dinner is always hot soup which is always excellent, followed by pasta, potatoes, meat of some sort, veggies and baked bread followed by desert of fruit or some other nice desert. The food at HIMEX is really excellent and frankly, we have yet to have a bad meal.

I think it fair to say, that everyone is sleeping well at this altitude (5250 m - 17,500 ft) without any problems. In fact, I think we have acclimatized so well, this altitude almost seems normal, until you bend down to pick up a moderate size rock to support your tent, and you realize its not really normal at all.

So, without divulging the dates we will leave, here is the summit plan. On day 1 we will leave at 2:20 am from our camp, walk to crampon point on the icefall edge of EBC - about 30 minutes walk. We will put on our crampons here and start moving up the Khumbu Icefall. Hopefully it will not take me the 7 1/2 hours it took last time. I am aiming at about 6 hours or less to what was Camp 1, but we will not be permitted to stop at Camp 1 this time, we will continue another 3-4 hours to Camp 2 where we will stay for about 36 hours. We will leave around 5 am from Camp 2 to climb to Camp 3 (6300 m) where will stay overnight sleeping on oxygen. About 5 am the next morning we will leave Camp 3 on the Lhotse Face to climb to the South Col at 7,900 m. We will stay overnight again sleeping on oxygen. At some ridiculously early time to be revealed to us, we will leave from the South Col on our summit bid. It is a long way - around 900 m in height - almost a kilometer in vertical climbing! This will probably take 9-10 hours and then return to Camp 4 at the South Col to sleep again on oxygen. Next day, we will move from Camp 4 to Camp 2 where we will stay overnight and next day return through the Icefall as early as possible to Base Camp!

I have to say that after all this time preparing for this its nice to have a firm date to leave. I have not yet resolved in my mind how to cope with the stress and extreme exhaustion that we will face for basically 6 days straight. But, one hopes that we have reached a point where we can play the mind over matter game to get through this next part. Having already been through the Icefall and up to Camp 3, certainly gives once confidence that we can do that again. From Camp 3 thought, its two very difficult sections and on summit day, you have to go up and back.

Since we are now very close to the end of this expedition, I can' but help to remember what the driving force has been. My goal, as I have said many times, is to raise awareness of the issues of AIDS and the lack of diagnostic tools for a great number of people in resource-limited nations. If you have not already done so, I exhort you to go to www.cytometryforlife.org and make a donation to the cause we are working toward. Across the cytometry world, there have been many individuals who have worked toward a solution to low cost diagnostics. However, the problem is far greater than any one group can solve. So this is the time for you to go to the above site and find the donation page and make a statement for the field of cytometry. When I return, I will be spending a great deal of time promoting some specific solutions to the cytometry issues that face those trying to bring very low cost, affordable CD4 diagnostic to those in rural environments. I am surprised that some of the proposed solutions that were heavily promoted at the 2006 AIDS Congress in Sydney seem to me to have been dreams! Frankly, in the last couple of years, I have been told of so many incredible solutions to low cost CD4, I might be excused for thinking that some of them might actually work. Frankly though, it might be the lack of oxygen up here on Everest, but my gut feeling is that most of the proposed solutions are pretty much hot air. For some reason, CD4 seems to be an easy term to use to raise the term sheets of start ups but not much more.

I have written a more detailed e-mail that will be sent to the cytometry discussion list in a day or two, so I will leave it to that email to challenge some of you on this issue.

In the mean time, I will start to get ready to move up the mountain. Its around 14 in the match and it's about time. I am looking forward to a real bathroom, a real shower, changing clothes less than every 8-9 days, not sleeping in a sleeping bag, not wearing a backpack for a long time, being able to talk to someone in my own field, not having eggs for breakfast every day, drinking real coffee, not drinking Sherpas tea (which is great on the mountain), not sleeping in a tent, and finally, being able to breath real air!

Rest Day - Snowed - relatively miserable day. Some sun.

Rest Day - Snowed - relatively miserable day. Little sun.

Rest day - Snowed - relatively miserable day. No sun.

Rest Day. It's snowing today - several groups tried to go for the summit in a 5 day run, but they had to turn around because of high winds. Tomorrow winds of 90 km/h are predicted - our maximum safe wind speed is around 20 km/h which means a minimum temp of around minus 30 C - that is not predicted for 10 days or so. So, this morning my primary activity was re-leveling my tent - since we are on a glacier - the tent sinks over several days and we have to keep building up and leveling the base. It's a lot of work at this altitude.

Rest day.

Rest day. What a food day! Since one of our members left a day or so ago by a heli, Russel Brice organized an incoming food drop on the heli - we had the most magnificent Norwegian Salmon - huge Salmon and so lunch was just extraordinary. In fact, breakfast, lunch and dinner were the very best we have had since we arrived. On long rest days, it seems the food is really worth while. Of course, I have lost a lot of weight - not sure how much, but I suspect about 15 pounds (7 kg). It's not that the food is not great, it is the various times you go off on acclimatization expeditions - if you go high, you just lose weight.

I have not commented so far on the big avalanche that hit the Khumbu Icefall a few days ago. It was very big and I am sure all the blogs have discussed it in detail. We saw it happen at 10:30 am from our Base Camp - and unlike most avalanches that happen around the camp, we did race outside and watch this one more than dust the entire Everest Base Camp (but not ours as we are 20 minutes lower than the traditional EBC). The sad thing is that a Sherpa was killed and two climbers injured - but apparently ended up walking away. For the past 3 days, we have observed teams of people on the Icefall looking for the body of the Sherpa. My understanding is they have not found it. The team caught in the avalanche was apparently "Asian Trekking" from Khatmandu. I really don't know any more details and chances are, most details you read on the web will be 3-rd or 4-th hand reports (typical of Everest Web information), so they may not be particularly accurate. We are all very glad that all of our HIMEX team was down the Icefall before this big avalanche happened. It has been drilled into us that the Icefall represents danger, and we try our hardest to be in the Icefall only at night or early morning when it is most stable.

This is probably a good time to remind those of you following my Everest Expedition, why I am here! Remember, my goal is to raise both funds and awareness of the difficulties in dealing with AIDS in resource limited countries and that I believe we can make a major impact if we in the cytometry world, focus a lot more in producing low-cost, easy to use, lightweight diagnostic instruments for CD4. Surely this is just one aspect of management of AIDS, but one that needs a lot more effort than presently being made. Our program at Purdue is just one for sure, but my goal is to encourage all of you to make a contribution - please go to www.cytometryforlife.org and go to the donation page and make a contribution. Thank you for doing this. The best time is now. Of course I will remind you again before I finish this expedition.

Rest day at Base Camp. Absolutely nothing to do - just rest. I am reading lots of books... We can go for long hikes, but frankly, the rest is worth more than the exercise. We may go down the road an hour or so tomorrow just to keep the legs going.