Who will be joining you on this expedition?

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Anatoli Boukreev

My sort of head climbing guide is Anatoli Boukreev. I'm not even sure how old Anatoli is. I think he's only 36 or something like that; a little younger than me. Anatoli has climbed Everest from the north without oxygen, he's climbed Everest from the south without oxygen. So he's stood on an 8,000-meter peak ten times, all without oxygen, I think.

Actually I just heard a story about how he had to use oxygen to climb Kanchenjunga (8,586 meters) in order to become a master of sport. But he's climbed six different 8,000-meter peaks and some of these other mountains he has climbed twice. I think Kanchenjunga has probably been twice, he probably had to go back and do it without oxygen.

He just climbed Dhaulagiri (8,167 meters) in 16 hours so he...claims he has the fastest ascent of an 8,000-meter peak and I'm not going to argue with him.

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So Anatoli spends a lot of the time in the Himalayas. I had him arrive about a week ahead of the rest of us to prepare the oxygen and just do a bunch of the sort of odds and ends that need to be done for an expedition.

The other guide is Neal Beidleman. Neal was on a trip to K2 (8,611 meters) with me in 1992. He's an ultramarathoner, I guess they call those kind of guys, ultra-athletes. He does the Leadville, Colorado, 100-mile race, that kind of thing. And he's usually in the top three, so he's a bit of a name in that ultramarathon type sport.

Didn't summit K2, but has since summitted Makalu (8,463 meters). Makalu is the fifth highest mountain in the world. Neal is along to be a guide with me and he's also an incredible people person. Neal is a "Bruce," to use the phrase. A "Bruce" is a term of endearment, sort of an elite group of cool people. There are boy "Bruces" and girl "Bruces." Neal has not summitted Everest so he is hungry to step on top of the world.

I think that is really a good mix of guides, because if there is a problem on summit day there would really not be any issue or question. I'd be happy to take somebody down to let Neal continue up with other climbers to get to the summit so everybody can sort of satisfy their goals. So I think that's a good mix and it's also very good for safety.

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Pete Schoening, 67 years old and--I don't know for sure-- if he were to climb Everest he would be the oldest person to stand on top. I feel pretty confident that he'll be able to do that. Tough guy, he's a bit of a legend at home in the United States. I'm not good with dates, but 1953, '58 probably, he was part of an American climb on K2 and there was a slide. His whole rope team slid down, way up high. I think this was right at the bottleneck or near the bottleneck on summit day and Pete managed to put in a self-arrest that held, I don't know, four people, something like that. Saved a bunch of lives.

He's an incredibly strong, strong person, strong climber. He has recently been to the top of Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro, and his climbing partners on those trips say that he's the strongest one of them all. So I'm really confident in his ability to climb Everest.

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Along with Pete is Klev Schoening, which is Pete's nephew, I believe. He looks like early 30s, something like that, hasn't really had any Himalayan climbing experience but he's just a big, strong, young buck of a man. And was just very, very strong on Aconcagua and Kilimanjaro.

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Sandy Pittman, this is Sandy's third attempt at Mount Everest. She was on one try several years back on the south side that was unsuccessful and really got the bug. Last year she put together her own trip on a very difficult route up the Kenchong face and they didn't get very far actually. But to me that just shows her desire and wish to get to the top. For me it took my third before I got to the top of Everest, and knock on wood, Sandy will get it on her third try, too.

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We've got Martin Adams. Martin has been on several Himalayan trips. I'm pretty sure he's summitted Kasherbrum II or very close to summiting Kasherbrum II and he's been to Cho Oyu. Strong, just a really good guy from Aspen, Colorado.

Coming also from Aspen is Charlotte Fox. Charlotte, to my mind, probably has climbed two 8,000-meter peaks and I would guess that that's more than any other American woman has climbed. And Charlotte is now going to get her third, she's going to kick Everest. She has her boyfriend, Tim Madsen, climbing with us. Tim, not a real experienced climber actually. A super athlete, Aspen ski patrol full time. Tim and Charlotte have done a lot of climbing this winter in the Canadian Rockies to prepare for this trip.

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On our team is Dale Kruse. Dale has been to the summit of Baruntse with me in 1991. He was on the Ama Dablam expedition with me and was just on Broad Peak in Pakistan. So this is his fourth Himalayan expedition. A dentist from Craig, Colorado. A great guy.

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And the last one in our little list of climbers is Lene Gammelgaard from Denmark. She's a very experienced climber in the Alps, not so much in the Himalayas. She just crossed a 20,000-foot pass on our trek into Broad Peak. And has been up to 22,000 feet on a couple of different trips more as a trekker than a climber. So she's sort of going for the big one here on this trip.

What are you bringing to keep all these people healthy and happy?

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Our food will be local food, but I have supplemented that with some of the treats that I know people miss on expeditions. Tillamook cheese has helped us out on our trip. I've brought a bunch of Gatorade and PowerBars and some of those kind of things you can't find in Kathmandu or Namche Bazaar. I think that those little amenities are really what keep our spirits, our energy up. The food on any trip, let alone an expedition, either a hotel or anything, even riding on an airplane, the quality of the food really makes a big difference about your impression of the experience.

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I think that there are a couple of people that are hoping to be able to climb without oxygen. Anatoli I know will not be using oxygen. Anatoli is an animal, a monster, that's great. But there will be oxygen for him on the South Col. Our oxygen we purchased from another expedition leader, Henry Todd, and this oxygen he got in Russia. All of the state-of-the-art oxygen bottles these days are made and filled in Russia. They have more titanium in Russia than anywhere in the world. And titanium is a very light, very strong metal. So that's what the bottles are made of and then they're wrapped in Kevlar. And then the biggest reason they're from Russia is that they can put more pressure in than is allowed to be pressurized in the United States.

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I brought the base camp tent from Seattle, which actually I purchased from Anatoli. The base camp tent is a Russian tent that I purchased from Anatoli in December and brought back to the United States and had it modified. I just think I beefed it up a little bit.

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We're also going to have a communications tent to keep in touch with you. I've brought over a generator. We have what is called a deep-cell battery which gives a very slow release of energy and that's going to be recharging our computers, it will be recharging the ghetto blaster. Base camp will be pretty posh, this is where we live, so our base camp tent will have a table, we'll have benches built out of rocks or stools or something, we're going to have music, Starbucks coffee. Starbucks has spnsored this expedition with a lot of coffee.