John and Bill had a great time on the approach into Base Camp, no issues with health or safety.They arrived on April 8th.

After a couple of days they headed back down the valley a ways and up onto a local training peak, Lobuche East. This is a wonderful mountain of 6,050 meters, providing a great chance to get out up into some thin air and work out the climbing systems before the real climb begins. Their ascent was without any problems, great weather on summit day. they left their high camp at 3 am and reached the top at 7:30 am, after a great climb on mixed rock and snow up to 70 degrees in steepness.