• by Paul Gough , May 22, 2003

A day after being beat by a Chinese crew who broadcast live from the summit of Mount Everest, an American cable network's team has been delayed from mounting its challenge.

It wasn't clear what had happened to delay the Outdoor Life Network's team and coverage of the ascent, which OLN had said had run into "unforeseen complications." The multimillion event, part of a six-month-long series called Global Extremes and sponsored by Toyota Motors USA, had been planned by the network for over a year. OLN had planned several hours of live coverage of its hand-picked American amateur climbers, beginning Thursday afternoon from the summit, the base camp at 17,000 feet and OLN's studios in Norwalk, Conn.

Details were scarce but it seemed, at least from initial reports, that the climb to the summit had been delayed and not canceled. "We will provide updated programming information as soon as we have confirmation of date and time," OLN President/CEO Roger Williams said Thursday afternoon.

In an interview Tuesday with the Media Daily News, Williams made it clear that safety would come before anything else. He said that climbers and crew had been well-trained and prepared. "Safety is first and television is second," Williams said Tuesday.

"Everest is certainly no walk in the park, as many people know. It's the ultimate extreme location on the planet. There's nowhere you're going to get to where the air is thinner and there's more potential peril and risk," Williams said.

In a report posted on OLN's Web site, climber Chris Warner said the 13-member team had made it to 27,400 in good shape. Mount Everest is 29,035 feet high and extremely dangerous. OLN said only about half of the people who begin to climb the mountain complete it, and a number have died attempting it. Warner said that on the most recent leg of their climb, the team came upon and treated a man with a broken fibula and two Japanese women with cerebral edemas. Weather conditions were pegged at 35 mph going up the mountain and a temperature of about 20 degrees.