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Written report translated from audio report:

“Hello Everyone, It’s Bill Burke from….

I sent a report on what happened over 24 hrs ago from the north col but my wife just told me that it didn’t go through. I feel very bad about that because I guess you guys were kind of wondering what happened to me. I will give a really short report now because I’ve got to get down to Chinese Base Camp and then when I get to Kathmandu I’m thinking I may put together a full report of exactly step by step of what happened on summit day. Otherwise first report is that Aboul and Doug and I are all safe at Chinese Base Camp. We made it down… from Advance Base Camp…..Doug already left CBC and Aboul, so I am the last one to leave here…..

On summit day we left Camp 3 for the summit at 8:30 in the morning, right behind the Chinese team that was climbing to the summit, not the fixing team, but the climbing team. Bottom line Aboul, the Russian made it to the summit okay. Doug and I got up to the NE ridge right above the first step actually to a place called “green boots” where an Indian climber died a few years ago and he is still there and you can still see his green boots so they call it that now.

Mingma completely surprised me by saying that we had to turn and go down because of moving too slow. I challenged him on that, we had a bit of an argument we were moving too slow, i thought I was moving quite fine, I felt strong, I felt really good.

But then he said that the sherpas that were with us didn’t have enough oxygen they only supplied with ? bottles of extra oxygen which isn’t enough because there were like four of them. I couldn’t say anything …because …..Mingma…ever ….in danger because they weren’t supplied with enough oxygen…had no choice, we had to go down.

As far as moving slow I have to … on that, I am going to go into it now. … reflection when I write the report from Kathmandu. The bottom line is I didn’t think we were moving slow at all, we made pretty good time….

That’s it in a capsule, obviously I am very disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to make it, I know Doug is too, his story is a little different than mine…. I’ll pass it along when I do my longer report. I am sorry for all of you who were following us so close and supporting me, I feel bad for you too. But you know it’s a….maybe I’ll come back, maybe I won’t, maybe I will have to be satisfied with the one summit of Mt Everest from the south side and be happy with that. So I’ll think about it and everything is going to be ok.

I’ll come down and probably do another report or two between now and Kathmandu. I am thinking about doing a rather long report so you get an idea what it is like to move up from camp 3 to the summit and encounter some difficulties and disagreements that are pretty typical . …..

I heard night before last one of the 7 Summits Climbers died on the second step coming down after going up which is quite sad. So I am happy to be alive, glad to have all of my fingers and my….(choked up)….sorry…….glad to have all of you as my family and my friends….. Thanks again for following my trip. As usual I consider it a privilege to be here and to even be on this mountain. Ok you guys-. Goodbye.”