There’s no news from Grant since his last SMS and phone call from ABC – must be the beer! His last call to Steph said he’d be coming down to basecamp today; and might be home as early as next Wed!

In any case, I have been conferring with Suze Kelly from Adventure Consultants, possibly the premier Everest guiding outfit about some statistics. Below is a list of Kiwi climbers who have summitted Everest (ignore the numbers on the left):

1 Sir Edmund Hillary
2 Mr Nicholas Banks
3 Ms Lydia Bradey
4 Mr Peter Hillary
5 Mr Robert Edwin Hall
6 Mr Gary Ian Ball
7 Mr Mike Perry
8 Mr Mark Whetu
11 Mr Guy Cotter
12 Dr Jan Elizabeth Arnold
14 Mr Jonathan Gluckman
17 Mr Andrew M Harris
20 Mr Russell Brice
21 Mr Richard Desmond Price
23 Mr David John Hiddleston
25 Mr Michael Roberts
26 Robert Anderson
28 Jamie McGuinness
29 Clive Jones
30 Julian Haszard
31 Mark Woodward
32 Derek Chinn
33 Dean Staples
36 Mark Ingils
39 Wayne Alexander
42 Steve Harvey
43 Steve Moffat
44 Penny Goddard
48 Mark Sedon
51 Mike Allsop
57 Dave McKinlay
60 Johnny Davison
64 Michael Phethean
66 Christine Burke
68 Adam Parore

Grant would be the 36th (not 31st as I reported earlier) Kiwi to summit, and the 69th Kiwi ascent of the peak.

On the same summit day, Peter Cammell from NZ also summitted – at 9am. As Grant made an audio post around 9am Nepal time – and he had been downclimbing for about 2 hours, I make his summit time to be around 730am. So Grant is #36 and Cammell is #37 – for all those trivia kings out there. Mystery of the morning solved with a  few email messages.

Cheers

David