Today the team has been busy in Base Camp making ready for the next couple of weeks which will be crucial to whether we succeed or fail. The expedition leader has produced a revised climbing plan which everyone has reviewed and together the team have rejigged the logistics plan to make sure that we have enough food, fuel, tents etc at the various high altitude Camps to make the plan succeed. Ian Venables the expedition Equipment Manager, Colin Scott the Food Member and Pema, the Sirdar, obviously had a major input into the revision process. We have also been checking with the Fleet Weather and Oceanographic Centre at Northwood for the weather forecast, which seems reasonable for the next few days anyway, so everything is in place for this major push towards our goal of climbing Kangchenjunga.

We spent some time discussing two questions which we were delighted to receive from Class P7 at Tweedbank School, in the Borders Region of Scotland, where Aleck Burrell's mum is a teacher. The questions Class P7 asked were:

What do you miss most when you are climbing in the Himalayas?

If you could take one luxury thing what would it be?

Each of the Team members have missed different things. The Team Leader has missed organic semi-skimmed milk for his breakfast and wished he could have brought an electric kettle. Andrew Hughes - the Team Doctor misses fresh milk and Cornflakes. Roddy McArthur misses his daughters and wishes he had brought his dog. Dave Pearce misses cream cakes and a bedside lamp as he is sick of reading with his headtorch. Larry said he misses a nice pint of Bass and he wishes he had brought a good joke book as James' jokes are lousy! Dave Bunting misses a warm bed. Aleck Burrell misses his Mum ( Hi Mum ! ) and wishes he had brought a Walkman. We send our very best wishes to all the children at Tweedbank School and Aleck is looking forward to getting back there in a couple of months time.

We have also been shown how our Russian-made emergency oxygen system, which will be held at various high Camps on the mountain, works by Dr Andy Hughes. Everyone had a go at connecting up the system and Andy explained the various flow rates and how long each bottle would last. The oxygen is for medical use, not for use whilst climbing as we are attempting an oxygen free ascent of the mountain.

Tomorrow morning the majority of the team will head off back up the mountain at 0400 to try and establish Camps 3 and 4 from where we hope, in the middle of May, to be able to mount our summit bid.