Hello to all of you following the Summits of Hope 2011 Everest Base Camp Expedition! We wanted to update everyone on our team’s current location in Lukla.

Currently, our climbers are safe, warm and sleeping at one of the nicest lodges in Lukla - the North Face Lodge, which we book as a nice break from cold smoky teahouses higher on the trail. Waiting for mountain weather to clear can be frustrating - but ultimately, we don't want to fly in bad weather - so we are all waiting for clear skies in Lukla.

From Vancouver, we are in constantly contact with our team leaders several times a day through phone, text and email. As of our most recent conversation, flights are still not leaving the airstrip. Once they awake monday morning (this evening our time) they will again walk over to the airport for a report on the current situation. But for now, we are staying put until the weather becomes safe to fly.

When the planes do get out, their will likely be a line up of trekkers who were scheduled to leave before us who will fly first, but when the Airstrip is running, hundreds of passengers can get out in a day.

Our team is well supplied with food, water and accommodations. Our local outfitters in Nepal have seen to it that our guides remain with our team. We are also in contact with our booking agent here in Vancouver, working with Cathay Pacific on the potential of having to change our return flights by a few days - but we do have several “weather days” built in to our itinerary for this exact situation - so we have some time before we need to adjust these flights.

That’s it for now - our team will be in touch with another update soon - and we are always here to answer questions through our “contact us” page.

WEATHER:
We use several sites to monitor weather in Lukla - but this one seems best:
http://www.accuweather.com/en-us/np/sagarmatha/lukla/quick-look.aspx