The weather last night at Base Camp was a bit windy but obviously nothing compared to what was experienced by the Indian expedition at Camp 1 whose Camp Baffin 4 tents were flattened by gale force winds and they had to seek sanctuary in our Terra Novas which weathered the storm with ease.

The emails we downloaded last night included two interesting items. The first was the final sit-rep from our "Junior Team" who, as you know from our website, are attempting to make the second ever ascent of Ramtang, which is on the North side of Kangchenjunga. They failed by a whisker after being rebuffed at 6400 metres by hard blue ice, deep snow and deteriorating weather conditions and in the end they ran out of time. The following is the text of the message sent from the Main Team leader to Andy Edington, the Junior Team Leader, today:

"Congratulations on putting up such a sterling performance on Ramtang. It was never going to be easy; it wouldn't have been worth forming a Junior Team if it was. This year has seen a lot of snowfall in the Kangchenjunga Himal and we are experiencing similar problems on this side of the mountain to those which have caused you to run out of time. However, I have no doubt that the whole of your team will have benefited enormously from the experience gained and that some of their names will feature again in future major British Service Expeditions.

The main exception of course is Brigadier David Nicholls who will leave the Service very soon. This is a great pity as Brigadier David is highly respected by mountaineers of all three Services and will be a great loss to the Service mountaineering community. We wish you all well on your journey home and we wish Brigadier David great success in whatever new career he chooses. We all look forward to renewing acquaintances on July 18th in London".

The second surprise was a good luck message from George Band who, of course, made the first ascent of Kangchenjunga on 25th May 1955. George and other members of the 1955 expedition will be celebrating the 45th anniversary of their first ascent in Snowdonia on Saturday 20th May and if we have any worthwhile news we will certainly keep them informed.

This morning at 0600 the "DHL" team, James Raitt, Aleck Burrell, Larry Foden and Roddy McArthur set off for Camp 1. They reported at the 1200 radio check that they had waded through waist deep snow to reach the Camp and had taken much longer than expected. Tomorrow they will make a carry to Camp 2.

The remainder of the team, including the Sherpas, have been sorting themselves out at Base Camp today and the demand on the kitchen staff for bowls of "tato pani" (hot water) for dhobying, shaving etc has been high. Ian Venables kept the expedition Doctor busy this afternoon by slipping on a rock and lacerating his left thumb, requiring half a dozen "homeward bounders" as we call sutures in the Royal Navy.

Today's pictures show the view back to the Hump from Camp 2 and Dr Andy Hughes at work this afternoon.