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LIGHT of the moon reflects from snowy branches of firs and below those branches, around white snow, the black shadows take mystical shapes. Above there are clear sky and a glory star, could be Venus. The calm light hit also a steaming worm? well, that must be one of the guys from the expedition who?s testing a sleeping bag in the freezing night.

EQUIPMENT TESTING

During fall and inter we have been doing more and more equipment checking and testing to achieve as perfect equipments as possible. Although everything was ready nearly a year ago we still try to enhance the wholeness by doing some little changes and improvements.

OLYMPUS cameras were taken in serious test use at SkiExpo. We have found that the both of cameras (DSLR E-3 and compact mju 1030SW) are very easy to use and they have high quality. We believe that even an ultimately worn out climber is able to catch some great shots from the summit ridge. And perhaps dirty and icy faces of the climbers will show some elegant features on photos. Just have to remember to recharge batteries before summit push and keep them in the warm pocket.

HALTI?s down jackets and pants were tested on the cold mountain faces in Peru. We found them very comfortable and practical. We went even further than these tests because this pair of equipments is very important for our lives, so we scanned them with IR cameras.

Sleeping bags were tested as well in freezing nights of January. We tested bags in snow, on mattresses and in a tent. While some of us felt heir own bed to be too comfortable and soft they headed to balcony with the sleeping bags and got sweet dreams on the wooden "bed". Anyhow there were only -15 degrees and we are still waiting freezing nights down to -38 degrees.

The new back bags (HALTI?s air6.X and air1.X) really surprised us as being so fabulous. Simple, lightweight, balanced and durable are the words that describes them best. By doing some minor changes we got steady places for the oxygen bottles and in addition bags have now some extra attachment as well.

If you have any questions about equipments or anything that concern the expedition, please feel free to mail us retkikunta-at-everest.fi. We will answer as soon as possible. If the answer seems to stay don?t worry, our training day might just be stretched on overtime.