Hello everybody,

It's Marty, Camp 2 at 6,700m on Makalu. Took off from ABC this morning; made it up here in less than 4 hours and feeling good. We have a game plan. I hooked up with a man named Brad Johnson from the United States and we're going to head off on a variation of the normal French route.

We're going to try the Messner variation which stays up high above the Makalu La. It'll be a bit more mixed climbing, a bit more fun climbing and goes back to the true summit of Makalu. Tomorrow we're going up over the Makalu La, trying to get a bivy in at 7,6 7,7 7,800m and then the next day, on the 22nd of May we'll try for the summit.

We'll let you know how it goes tomorrow; I'll do another quick dispatch. Hope everyone is enjoying following us. I wish Chris (who's probably reading this from home)all the best and I'll call you as soon as I get to the summit and back down where Giannina is down at BC. Our porters are coming in on the 23rd so I might just miss them and Giannina will move over to the Hillary BC and hang out there until I get back possibly with the British expedition.

It looks like we still have high winds the next couple of days, but we should get a chance to summit on the 22nd or the 23rd. On the 24th we have precipitation coming in, but that's also a possibility. We're looking at the jet stream just shifting a little bit allowing the monsoon to start rolling in. That’s the window in the Himalayas we need to climb 8,000m peaks so we're doing pretty good.

I'll let you know how tomorrow goes, how we're feeling on our pre-summit day. It's quite exciting! All the best to those in NZ and everybody around the world that’s following us.

Much love from Nepal.

Namaste

-Marty