Fiona writes an Everest update on our pda from Camp 2. Writing updates and engaging with you by receiving your messages posted here, and then being able to write back to you was a highlight of the expedition for both of us. Photo Paul Adler

Hi everyone – Paul here with some good news.

After 7 months of work, we have finally finished the MyEverest web site. After putting up the last posts, we received a lot of enthusiastic feedback from you, which we really appreciated - especially as this undertaking turned out to be a fair bit bigger than we had initially anticipated!

Already there are five people that have created websites on MyEverest and will be posting dispatches during their upcoming climbs. Three of these (including me) are climbing Mt Everest in the April-May climbing season, and one is climbing Ama Dablam. So for those of you that are interested in following the progress of someone trying to climb to some of the highest points in the world, this should provide a variety of different perspectives about what it’s really like.

We’ve also had a number of people approach us with their personal stories about an “Everest” challenge they’ve undertaken and these are included as MyEverest Stories. These range in topics (not all about mountain climbing!) and are an incredible insight into different life experiences that most of us will never experience.

Need to resubscribe to receive updates
IMPORTANT: If you want to receive updates from MyEverest, you need to subscribe – this is a completely separate website and you are not automatically subscribed. Just to make it clear, everything on the MyEverest web site is free, so there is no charge at all for this. To receive email updates, just go to www.myeverest.com and click on the “Register here…” link on the left hand side of the home page near the Login box. Once you’ve registered with the site, you go to Email Notifications where you can choose to subscribe to all climbs or just select which ones you are particularly interested in.

On my personal section of the site, I’ve uploaded new information about my upcoming climb, including information about my training and what I have done differently this time, my decision to climb again, and some new information about my gear. I can’t believe I leave in less than 3 weeks!

Anyway, Fiona and I would be keen to hear about what you think of MyEverest. If you notice anything strange or have any problems with the site, please also let us know.

Cheers,
Paul

PS – we won’t be posting to this website anymore, so please remember to register with MyEverest if you want to continue to receive updates.

Fiona's mother, Margaret Harrington, will be trekking into base camp with Fiona in April. Photo Fiona Adler


Kyna and Fiona cutting up apples that we had collected from their tree. Photo Paul Adler

Hi - Fiona here,

Just a short update about the trek into base camp. I’m very excited because my Mum (Marg), Beck (Paul’s sister), and Denise (a family friend) have all decided to trek in to base camp with me.

Also, Paul’s two brothers – Tim and Damien have decided to trek into base camp with him. This will be fantastic support for Paul. I’m sure there’ll be so much talking that they’ll be at base camp before they even realise it! Tim lives in Boston and Damien in Ballarat (about an hour out of Melbourne), so it’s not often they can get together. Paul and Dame are leaving Melbourne late on 29th March and will meet Tim in Kathmandu.

Once at base camp Tim and Dame will spend a couple of days there and then head back out together. After a few more days, Paul will hopefully begin his acclimatisation rotations. Most climbers do 3 rotations but last year Paul and I did only 2 but made them longer in duration than other climbers. This was partly because Paul had a chest infection and so we started late, but it seemed to work pretty well and more importantly, it avoids an additional trip each way through the icefall. It does mean spending quite a lot of time at camp 2 – which is fine, provided you have a lot of books and patience. Some people believe that camp 2 is too high to spend much time there, but we both felt pretty comfortable (relatively speaking of course), although we didn’t sleep too well.

My trekkers group will leave Melbourne the night of April 25th and plan to spend a couple of days in Kathmandu to check out the sights and purchase some gear. We’ll then fly into Lukla and from there, we’ll begin our trek into base camp – taking a slow and conservative schedule to minimise the chance of altitude sickness. We plan to reach base camp on or before May 10th. By this time we expect that Paul will be completing his second (and final) acclimatisation rotation where he’ll have been to camp 3 without oxygen. But it’s very dependent on weather and his health so we can’t be too exact about dates.

Mum, Denise and Beck will stay at base camp for a few days and then trek out together, arriving back in Melbourne on 20th May. None of them have been to Nepal before and have varying levels of experience. Denise has trekked the Inca Trail in Peru so knows what altitude feels like, Beck has done some hiking in Australia, and Mum walks a lot and is generally very healthy but has never done any overnight hiking before. In the last couple of months she’s joined a gym, purchased hiking boots, got the green light from her doctor, and she and Beck have become regulars at the Thousand Steps walk in Ferntree Gully. She’s pretty nervous but I have no doubt that she’ll be fine. As an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, I’m sure she’ll love the interaction with the Nepalese people along the way as well.

If anyone else is interested in joining our base camp trek with us or meeting up along the way, please get in touch soon.

I’ll be staying at base camp as support for Paul until he finishes climbing. We’ve purchased what we hope are better radios this year, so that we can communicate more easily while he’s on the mountain. There are always a fair few other people around, but even still, it’s a pretty lonely experience up there. Looking back on it, we had a big advantage last year being there together, and also getting so many messages from everyone around the world. It really made us feel like we weren’t alone up there, that other people were cheering for us, and sometimes just gave us something else to think about.

Other than planning Paul’s climb and my trek, we took a brief trip to New Zealand this month to be there for Kelly (Paul’s cousin) and Mark’s wedding. It was beautiful – we loved the butterflies guys! Great to catch up with the rest of family there as well. We also stayed a couple of days with Kyna - a good friend who used to share a house with us in our university days. Last time we saw her was at her wedding and now she and Mal have two gorgeous little girls. We really enjoyed hanging out with them, picking apples off their tree, playing with the girls, and catching up on the last 2 years.

Paul’s training is going well and the MyEverest website is nearly ready. We’ve been extremely encouraged by everyone’s enthusiastic reaction to the idea – so thanks for all you comments. It looks like there’ll be a couple of other climbers using it this climbing season to send updates, plus there are several non-climbing related stories about people that have tackled some very different challenges in their lives. I was brought to tears reading one of them so we hope to share them with you soon.

Remember, if you or someone you know are working towards something new in 2007 and would like to share your journey with others, please get in touch. I’ll actually be using MyEverest to log my progress with the next big challenge I’ve set myself. Together with Brad Bond (a friend and our business partner at Invizage), I’m developing a community website which is based on an idea I had in 2000 and have recently seen variations of it working well in the US. Anyway, I’ll tell you all about it once MyEverest is up and running.

Hope everyone’s start to 2007 has been great so far.
Fiona

Julie Smith captured this stunning photo from 28,000' of the shadow cast by Mt. Everest at 5am on 23 May 2006. She reached the summit two hours later. It was her third attempt on Everest in as many years. Fiona reached the summit a little more than half an hour after her at 7:50am. Photo Julie Smith

Hi, it's Paul here.

Not the usual kind of update, because I wanted to tell you about a new website that Fiona and I have been working on and are very excited about.

Background
As most reading this will know, we were truly amazed by the level of interest people gave to this little website we built for our 2006 Mount Everest expedition. We got so much out of it and know that receiving your messages of encouragement played a significant role in keeping us motivated and focused for our climb.

We received some seriously inspiring messages. A few stand-outs were;

"I can't even begin to tell you how inspired I am by you both. Following your adventure has motivated me to get off my sofa and on the treadmill. I have done almost nothing since I had my first child 5 years ago. Now I am working to become more and more active…Thank you so much for posting this blog and the great pics. You have given me back a gift I thought I had lost forever - the great outdoors…"

"I am battling osteoarthritis and just trying to get motivated to change this downward spiral I feel on. Your motivation, stamina and strength encourages, inspires, and excites me. Thank you for sharing this...."

"Congratulations once again on such a fine effort! Our latest news is that we are expecting our first child this weekend. This is my Everest!!"

"I look forward to seeing your messages each day, and take some considerable inspiration from your fantastic efforts. I am climbing a mountain of my own these days so I will race you both to the top." (From a friend who is facing a serious illness.)

When we were back home and reflecting on our trip and re-reading your messages this kind of stuff just blew us away. We had never imagined that a website about our climb could have such an effect on people.

But many other people have inspirational stories
Whilst we were climbing we shared many of your messages with our fellow climbers and several of them asked if they could get a website like ours, but unfortunately this site was not easy to setup and update, even though we both have many years of IT experience.

So we started thinking if it would be possible to develop some technology that would allow other climbers to easily create their own interactive website. We also realized that this might not just be for mountaineers. We think it could be equally valuable for people facing all kinds of life Everests – both for the people facing the challenge and for others supporting them.

Enter the new website
And so, the idea behind “MyEverest.com” was born – and we’re pleased to say, it will be launched very soon. It will be a website that allows other people to easily create and update their own web pages, without needing any programming skills. For mountaineers and people where a computer is not practical it will support updating your site through a pda and satellite phone, using the same technology we used in our 2006 and 2004 expeditions.

It will be provided free of charge and will hopefully help other people achieve something that they thought impossible. For us, this is a non-commercial project that we see as a hobby – we’re passionate about making this technology as accessible as possible so that others can get the same benefits we received last year on Everest.

Do you have an Everest?
The purpose of sharing this with you before the website is ready to launch is to see if you or anyone you know would be interested in writing about their own “Everest” goal. It might be to learn a new skill, lose weight, climb a mountain, change jobs, start a business, finish some business, quit smoking, write a book, find a life partner, mend a relationship, buy a house, buy a block of houses, sail around the world, break a habit, achieve a physical challenge, build something, battle an illness, really anything. If you have already faced a big challenge, you might also like to share it in the form of a story. Either way, we’d be really keen to hear from you.

I’ll be using this new site for my 2007 attempt on Mount Everest this March and it would also be very useful for other climbers that would like an interactive website for the upcoming Himalayan mountaineering season. You would need to have a PDA and a satellite phone, but if you don’t have these, we can show you how to buy them second-hand, and after the expedition you can easily sell them, so your costs would be minimal. Of course, we’ll explain how to set everything up and get you updating your website.

Whatever the challenge, we believe that by regularly writing about your goal and receiving support and advice along the way, you’ll have a far greater chance of succeeding. So do you have an Everest challenge that you’d like to share with others?

We don’t know how this will all work out, if there are people out there who would like to write about their challenge using an expedition-type website, or whether other people would be interested in following their progress. There is only one way to find out…

If you want to know more about being part of MyEverest, please post a message below or send us an email.

Kind Regards,
Paul Adler

PS - If you have any thoughts or comments on this idea, or suggestions on what makes a really great expedition website, please post a message below. We’d love to hear from you.

On the Overland Track near Windy Ridge hut. Photo Paul Adler


Standing in front of Dove Lake and Cradle Mountain on a hot day. Photo Paul Adler


The locals were very friendly. This wallaby has a joey in it's pouch, but it must have been camera shy as it wouldn't come out for a photo. Photo Paul Adler


Barn Bluff in the early morning light. There were lots of opportunities for rock scrambling along the track. Photo Paul Adler

Hi it’s Fiona here,

Paul and I are just back from 7 days hiking the Overland Track in Tasmania. We were planning to finish the rest of the Australian Alps Walking track from Mt. Hotham to Walhalla, but a couple of days before we were due to leave, some very large bushfires started in the area we were due to walk through. We had everything arranged: transport to the start of the hike and from the finish, all maps, but with the fires growing larger we decided to change our plans.

Paul's sister had just walked the Overland Track a few weeks ago. It’s a walk that is particularly famous in Australia and she had all the maps and information we would need. A quick check of the discount airlines and we had some cheap flights, a visit to a few websites found us some overnight accommodation in Launceston, a bus ride and a permit purchased to walk the track.

About the Overland Track
It's about 65 kilometres long through the Cradle Mountain and Lake St. Clair National Parks in Tasmania’s World Heritage listed Wilderness Area. Many people ask us if we have done the Overland Track and we had never considered it before, usually because of ignorance on our behalf as to what the walk involved, a belief that it was very crowded and that getting there was expensive and logistically difficult as it’s a one way walk. Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised on all counts. www.overlandtrack.com.au has lots of information about the walk, including links to the different companies that offer shuttle services. I guess the walk is popular because it takes you through very spectacular, and ever-changing sceneries. You go through grasslands, alpine regions, rainforests and temperate forests.

Our Walk
We started near Dove Lake and spent a leisurely day climbing to a lookout over the lake and climbing Cradle Mountain, before camping at Waterfall hut. The next day we backtracked around the other side of Cradle Mountain, back around Dove Lake and then climbed Barn Bluff in the afternoon. With the weather still hot the next day, we walked to Pelion hut, which is about half way along the track. This was the end of the hot weather, because it started raining the day after that. But not to be discouraged, we decided we’d still climb up Mount Ossa anyway - at an altitude of only 1617 metres (5305 feet), it’s Tasmania’s tallest mountain. But despite its seemingly low height, the weather can get pretty impressive. We were amazed to be tackling howling winds and snow battering in sideways at us – all in the Australian summer!

Obviously we survived and that turned out to be our only day of bad weather. We continued on to Kia Ora hut, and then up to Pine Valley. If anyone is thinking of going there, this area is a must-see. The walk in sees you beneath an amazing moss-covered forest and the climb up The Acropolis was incredible. We spent a long time up the top absorbing the landscape that stretched out around us and admiring the rock formations shaped like columns.

The last section saw us walking around the incredible Lake St Clair. We managed to arrive at the visitor centre here just as it started to rain heavily again.

Our Highlights
The Overland is a very social walk to do. Only 30 independatnt walkers are allowed to start the track each day and because we kept doing lots of side-tracks, we kept oscillating between two different groups. It was great meeting a whole range of interesting people out there – all ages and many nationalities, some on their first hiking trip, others viewing it as a must-do when touring Australia, while others were returning to the area from many previous visits. We even met some girls that were doing some hiking there as part of their training for one of their first mountaineering attempts – Mount Kilimanjaro. Good luck if this gets to you before you go!

We saw a lot of wildlife on this trip – 5 snakes (which is amazing when from all our other hiking we’ve ever done, we’ve only seen 3 snakes previously), lots of wallabies, wombats, pademelons (first time we’ve come across these but the seem to be a cross between a wallaby and a possum), and an echidna. There were even sightings of platypus – which is very rare.

Most of all, it was great to be out walking again. Switching off and getting back to the simple things in life – like how I’m going to trick Paul so that I can eat most of the chocolate!

Back Home
We flew straight home on Thursday night feeling very sorry for the people sitting near us on the flight (7 days in the same clothes is not pretty). Friday has been spent unpacking, washing and catching up on bills and emails and last night we had Paul's father's 60th Birthday party. Paul gave himself a rest day on Friday, but on Saturday he was back into the training with a 180 kilometre bike ride.

Kind Regards,
Fiona

PS – We’re sending our best wishes to all those in the bushfire affected areas. Hold tight!