At some point during my late teen years, I responded to a classified ad in our local newspaper offering "exciting employment opportunities for bright and enthusiastic go-getters" looking to make piles of money. A few days later I arrived at the pre-screening meeting, only to find an entire room packed full of other eager beavers also looking to score an easy buck. Dressed to-the-nines in a brown corduroy sport coat and my father's worst tie, I listened intently to an annoyingly peppy salesman enthusiastically pitch his entire line of company products, including what must have been the world's heaviest residential vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately, the vacuum (a 71 pound, highly chromed behemoth) was the very product the room full of (now slightly less) eager beavers were to proselytize around town, selling a lá pyramidal fashion.

At the first coffee break in the meeting a mass exodus occurred, myself included. Yet despite loosing an incalculably important morning of my teen life, I managed to come away from that meeting with a phrase that has stuck with me to this day. From the myriad of clichés arising from thousands of years of historic wars and ancient revolutions comes this overly-plagiarized gem, courtesy the annoying vacuum sales guy: "If I should stagger, hold me steady. If I should fall, pick me up. If I retreat, shoot me."

Only with such romanticism and silvery prose as mustered by the vacuum cleaner guy could I find any suitable explanative for our team's present state. For after pushing upwards for 4 days through jet stream winds, bitter cold and countless sloughs of spindrift, we finally managed to establish Camp 3 on the Abruzzi this past week--only to be eventually retarded (I chose that word most carefully) by waist deep snow and extreme avalanche conditions on the slopes below Camp 4.

Our efforts up and down K2 have been described by other teams at base camp as strong, ambitious, tenacious- yet I prefer the self-ascribed term, "irretractable". If there were an award for teams logging vertical footage in the Karakorum this summer, ours would definitely be in the running for the first prize ribbon. Yet despite the crevasses, the storms, and the deep snow, our team holds firm to our strengths: faith, optimism, confidence, experience, and a resident sense of humor.

Our base camp support is constant and solid. Our home front support is unwavering and empowering. (Thanks everyone at home!) The five of us often spend long hours in the dining tent, dialoging about practically any subject, still enjoying each other's company even after being confined to such close quarters during those highly stressful days on the mountain. We are sensing the summit nearing, the final steps almost in our grasp. And with a little timing, an intelligent strategy, and those bright beams coming down from the heavens, we shall soon have our ribbon in hand...a corduroy ribbon, of course.

Second prize is a very heavy used vacuum.

Don Bowie