Scott Hamilton Tuesday, May 18 Everest Base Camp, Nepal

The Yaks are coming! The E-3 team arose at 5:45am in order to be ready for an interactive educational session with schools across America. Coordinated by E-3 Sponsor OLYMPUS, the program included live 2-way audiovisual communications directly with the E-3 explorers and researchers at Everest Base Camp. The program literally covered the country with schools as far away as California, with a live feed to the Internet via www.broadcast.com that was literally seen around the world. The program will be repeated, live from Mt. Everest, on May 18th at 9pm EST. The entire E-3 team particularly enjoyed the interactive question and answer session with students able to address questions directly to the explorers at Mt Everest.

After our educational session Wednesday morning, (Tuesday evening in the USA) the E-3 team will begin to dismantle the Clinic in preparation for our departure the following morning to begin the long journey back to civilization. The entire day was spent completing high altitude research activities. Dr. Jennifer Grin, who has been conducting visual acuity testing throughout the expedition, is performing a particularly interesting test. To complete her research, Jenny has been dilating the pupils of the E-3 team members in order to get an unobstructed view of the eye's retina. The process causes blurry vision along with enhanced sensitivity to light for several hours. All the members of the E-3 team have been good sports participating in this research, but for obvious reasons prefer having the research conducted at night. In the meantime Dr. Davila and Jennifer Kreshak completed their cardiac output research, and Grant Goldin continued his series of psychometric exams.

The Nepali porter team is scheduled to arrive at Everest Base Camp tomorrow evening, and the yaks are coming the following morning. Our plan is to break camp and move to the research facility at Lobuche to conduct additional research on hypoxia on May 21st. After that we will continue our research, and our trek back to civilization. The E-3 team is looking forward to returning to the land that lives below the clouds. Stay tuned for more updates...the journey is far from over.

Scott Hamilton