Base Camp: Dave, how are you feeling, now that you're at Camp III?

David Carter: I'm getting a high-altitude cough. I'm very worried about the wind. But I know I'm in good hands. I'm a little nervous. I'd be lying if I told you differently.

Base Camp: When will you go on oxygen and do you find that breathing supplemental oxygen makes a big difference?

David Carter: Tonight I will be breathing oxygen on a half-liter flow. It does make a difference. We had the oxygen on and my oxygen saturation without breathing oxygen was 71 and then when I went on oxygen it jumped up to about 84. What's interesting is that I breathed it before I ate lunch to get my appetite back up and it really helped.

Base Camp: Otherwise, you're feeling well?

David Carter: Right now I feel pretty good. My head cold is dragging me down a little bit, but I feel good and ready to go.

David Breashears: I left Camp III over two hours ago. I'm feeling very good, actually, considering the lack of sleep I had at Camp III without supplemental oxygen. I crossed the Yellow Band about five minutes ago—it's about 1,000 feet out of Camp III at 25,000 feet. It's very hard work. This is where climbing at altitude really starts to take its effect. I'm starting to feel the effects of the so-called Death Zone. I'm at 25,200 feet now. The summit of Everest, 3,800 feet above me, has a very nice plume blowing off of it at the moment. Jangbu is five feet ahead of me and Ed is three feet behind me. We tend to take about 10 steps before we rest and catch our breath. The ropes are really crowded up here. Looking at the trail 2,000 feet ahead of me I see eight or nine Sherpas, some resting, some moving.

Base Camp: "Ed, last year you climbed Everest without oxygen. How do you feel being on oxygen now?"

Ed Viesturs: Being on oxygen is a little weird. The mask is in your way, but it feels better, you don't lose your breath quite as easily. And probably tomorrow and tonight I'll feel a lot better and a lot more refreshed rather than climbing without oxygen.

Base Camp: Are you having any thoughts of home, now that you're getting close to the end of this trip?

Ed Viesturs: Tomorrow is our last day basically—this has been a long trip. But to be successful in these mountains you've got to have a lot of patience and hopefully ours will pay off.

Base Camp: What about the numbers of people that may be climbing with you to the summit tomorrow? We hear there are about 50. Are you concerned about that?

Ed Viesturs: It concerns me—there isn't a lot of safety in numbers—our plan is to try to get out ahead of everybody. We think we can do that, but I'm sure that will be the same plan for the other teams. So, there'll be a number of people leaving at the same time. If we can get ahead of everybody then it'll be fine climbing until we start coming down. Then we'll have certain bottlenecks that we'll have to look out for, particularly the Hillary Step. People will be coming up that, but we're bringing a rope so that if there is a bottleneck we can simply throw another rope down and have an up rope and a down rope. But it does concern me with all these people here. There's a lot of relatively inexperienced people. Hopefully nobody's going to get in trouble. If they do, of course, the more experienced people always have to help out.

David Breashears: Something is bothering me and something was bothering me May 9th, 1996. There's things you really have a lot of faith in and things that you don't and I have a lot of faith in my gut feelings. I'd like to see this day sort itself out without me being a part of it. Pete and I have had a very exhausting day, as we've had to shoot all of the climbers' neuro-behavioral tests. We need time now to eat and drink and try to rest. We're not 100% sure whether we'll be going for the summit tonight, especially with these growing numbers of people and if the weather is bad."