Everest 22-27th May, what happened to Thomas, Lincoln & Harry

nospam@example.com (Harry Kikstra) — Sat, 27 May 2006 16:01:26 -0500

Following is the first draft of my story; my vision of the truth so to speak.. I will continue with Lincoln's part tomorrow as the generator is off and it is almost 0400 here and I do need some sleep after running down to ABC within 4 hours, Forgive spelling and typing mistakes, as far as I know the facts are true.
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Hi everybody,

many of you have already read or listened to reports about the things that happened on Everest the past few days. To avoid confusion, mis-translation, mis-interpretation, speculation etc I would like to give my own first-hand account of what happened the past week on Everest.

Just as a reminder, some basics:

Thomas contacted me to see if I could set up and guide a small expedition that could help him, a disabled climber, to climb Everest. His disability was: since a removal of a braintumor, he had noticed that his vision was deteriorating, whenever he got into a low pressure environment, whether it being a mountain (high altitude) or a test environment. Due to several reasons I accepted this challenge and agreed with my colleague, partner and friend Alex Abramov to give up my co-leadership of our joint expedition (we each have 15 clients in this expedition).

Instead I would lead a small expedition, consisting of Thomas, 2 personally selected Sherpa friends Pemba & Pasang and 2 climbing cameramen Milan Collin & Kevin Augello, who would be documenting the climb and everything surrounding it.

We started a dedicated
site, www.SightOnEverest.com , so we could post updates, but also give attention to a very special charity, Cureblindness.org. We want to raise awareness and funds for them, nothing of the donated money would go to our climb or documentary, we financed those ourselves.

We did not know in advance how far Thomas' sight would deteriorate and therefore would not speak of a 'blind climber', something that some media found easy to communicate. The only blind climber that summited Everest (and the 7summits) is Erik Weihenmayer, a great man and a formidable accomplishment. We also agreed that we would see how far the combination of Thomas' experience, visual problems, and mental and physical strength would bring him during the 2 months on Everest, one step at a time.

Lincoln Hall was part of another sub-team, to
get Christopher Harris (15 years) to the top, together with his father Richard and filmmaker Michael Dillon. Lincoln had already climbed (but not summited) Everest in 1984.

Our (the
7summits.com/7summits-club.com expedition) first team summited the 21st, the day we (team B) left for the higher regions of the mountain.

This is what happened from day to day:
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Everest 22-27th May, what happened to Thomas, Lincoln & Harry