Costa Mesa, Ca.

January 11, 2016

Dear Family & Friends:

I hope your 2016 has started well and will finish in spectacular form.

I culled through thousands of photos and hours of video to prepare a short movie of our Burke-Khang expedition late last year. You can watch this 37-minute movie by clicking on the link at the end of this message.

This expedition was one of my favorite mountain trips. Burke-Khang is located in the fabled Himalaya mountain range between Mt. Everest and Cho-Oyu. Like Mt. Everest and Cho-Oyu, Burke-Khang is a border peak since it sits on the border of Nepal and Tibet. Our expedition began with a fun-filled, although arduous, 50-mile trek from Lukla to the foot of the mountain deep in the Gokyo Valley in Nepal. As you will see from the movie, the views were breathtaking.

Burke-Khang was my most challenging mountain climb, harder even than Mt. Everest. The vertical pitch of the climb was consistently in excess of 75 degrees and the rock and ice climbing above Camp 1 were, at times, technical. The summit ridge was described by our veteran Sherpa line-fixing team as the most dangerous they have ever encountered in the Himalaya because of cornices, crevasses, seracs, avalanche risk, unstable snow and 90 degree concave ice walls. They described the conditions on the summit ridge as “terrifying.” You can read my account of our summit day in Bill’s Articles.

My plans for the future are uncertain. I would like to return to Burke-Khang to finish the expedition, but this will require some serious route planning unless conditions change on the summit ridge, which is a possibility. I’ll keep you informed.

Bill

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