Happy Friday the 13th, SWEETFCers!

Kelly here with another update:

What a frustrating day for the Blogger website to go down for maintenance!  I know a lot of folks have been anxiously awaiting news here and Blogger, meanwhile, has been moving backwards – removing posts from the last several days.  By the time this posts, I believe they will all be restored – so scroll down to get caught up if you weren’t able to see the updates I posted on Seth’s facebook account last night!  My apologies if the summit announcement shows up three times.  I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t posting on the site so I re-sent it, twice.  Unfortunately I don’t have access to delete posts, so…  there they’ll stay until Seth can take them down!  But if there was any post ever worth showing up three times… I think that was the one!!

Enough about the blog.  It’s 9am in Seattle as I write this, and the latest news is that Seth has now descended from Camp IV and is tucked in safe and warm at Camp III.  That’s below the high-altitude “death zone” so a great relief in that sense.  It’s also a great relief that after 24+ hours of near-constant extreme effort, he should be able to rest and sleep for a night.  He is hopefully already asleep by the time I write this, and will get up early in the morning to descend the rest of the way to base camp, planning to cross the ice fall one last time before the day gets too warm.  I believe he should be back at base camp for lunch on Saturday, or by about 2am tonight in Seattle, hopefully earlier.  I will, of course, update the blog with a quick announcement when I know he’s down safely – and then I’ll let Seth take it from there!

Seth sounded great on the phone.  He’s got a bit of a cough which he attributes to the oxygen mask drying out his throat, but it doesn’t sound too severe.

Thanks again to everyone for all your good wishes and support!  Please give one more blast of positive energy into the universe late tonight while Seth is crossing the ice fall – let’s get him through that and then it’s all gravy from there.

Warmly,
~Kelly