Everest Diary: The green light at last! We've finally got a weather window large enough to head for the summit next week. And it's scary.
We've been here for almost two months and it seemed as though we'd never get a crack at the summit. We were trying to be patient, but we were going stir-crazy.
The weather had been so unseasonably bad that expedition leader Russell Brice had told us he couldn't guarantee us a shot at the summit. And we were all devastated.
There seemed to be a chance last weekend, but it was a narrow and dangerous window. Lots of teams took the risk and lots reached the summit, but there were two deaths and a high level of frostbite injuries.
Brice wasn't prepared to risk either his clients or the Himalayan Experience (Himex) Sherpas, so we were kept pegged back at advanced base camp (ABC) enviously watching the action on the final summit ridge through a telescope.
Another narrow weather window has opened this weekend. At least two people stood on the top of the world yesterday morning and the Himex Sherpas head up today to put in the final work on the high camps farther up the mountain.
But the window was, once again, too small and potentially too dangerous for Brice to send up his clients. So, once again, we were pegged back at ABC.
But on Thursday we were given the joyous news that there was a bigger window next week that would accommodate us all.
"We're on a once-only chance," Brice told the assembled Himex team at a meeting on Thursday afternoon. "This is it. This is what we've been waiting for." Despite reports in Brice's native New Zealand newspapers that Himex had retreated off the hill, and midweek stories on the mountaineering website everest.news that we were due to summit yesterday, next week is our goal.
"It's by far the best forecast I've seen since we came here", Brice said, after viewing the computerised jet-stream and weather charts he pays so dearly for and guards so ferociously.
With five days of climbing involved to get to the summit and back down to the North Col still 600 metres above ABC, the schedule is pretty tight to get everyone back to Kathmandu for their scheduled flights out of Nepal on June 9. But Brice is confident he can do it. Now it's up to us to do what we came here to do - climb the mountain.
Mogens Jensen, the 32-year-old chronic asthmatic, is still planning an oxygenless assault on the mountain. "I'll use oxygen to go down if I'm in trouble, but not to go up," the Dane said after Thursday's meeting.
Shinichi Ishi, the 61-year-old Japanese man who lost a friend at the Second Step last year, will be part of the first team. His familiarity with the route will speed his progress, but Brice revealed at the meeting that the strong winds have blown away the snow that had been used to cover the body of his friend, Shoto Ota.
"I'm sorry, but we are going to see bodies on the way", Brice said. "It's a bit morbid, but you're going to have to put a mental block on that."
Along with Ishi's friend, there is a Polish man - known as "Green Boots" - at the top of the exit cracks before the First Step, a Korean from last year, and the Slovenian Marco Linekah, who died last Saturday.
The members of the tragic quartet are all on the path to the summit. But there are other bodies, which we will be passing close to but probably won't even see.
We're all aware of the statistics. We know of the dangers. But Chieko Shimada, another of the Japanese trio, is not the only one to have been unnerved by the talk of bodies.
"This Everest. It's very big," she confided in me at breakfast yesterday morning. "I'm feeling nervous, I just want to run away. I don't know if I can stay strong for six days."
But then she admitted that it wasn't the mountain but the thought of the bodies that had caused her sudden bout of nerves. She's not the only one. But Brice is right. We have to mentally block it out.
Everest is not to be underestimated. If she can't get you physically, she'll wheedle her way into your psyche. She is all-powerful, all-conquering. Only the strong survive.
The Grania Willis Everest Challenge 2005, supported by The North Face, SORD Data Systems, Peak Centre Ireland and Great Outdoors, is in aid of the Irish Hospice Foundation and the Friends of St Luke's Hospital. Donations to the fund can be made to The Grania Willis Everest Challenge, Permanent TSB, Blackrock, Co Dublin, account number 86877341, sort code 99-06-44. Visa card donations to 01-2303009.