I called my parents on the Thuraya phone and it was interesting having a conversation with my father.  He asked if I had gotten over my cough and how Shawna’s knees were feeling.  It was odd that someone so far away that I had not talked to for a month knew my day-to-day health.  Then I remembered he was reading our web logs posted on the Internet.  He said he enjoyed reading the daily web log.  He was the first person to confirm that somebody was actually reading our stories and it made the effort in writing it each night worthwhile. He then proceeded to chide me on my on the poor spelling and grammar in each web log.  I told him that due to limited batteries life for my laptop I write the story on the fly with no proof reading or review before I hit send on my Perl program to get it online.  It was a good conversation at 18000 feet even with the grammatical criticism; I knew the story was getting out even if English teachers worldwide were cringing at the glob of text trying to be a story.  I explained that I had three days of snow and long hiking days limited my solar charging capability.  I need was to come up with a way to solar charge another battery in my backpack while I hike (or better yet, in my Sherpas backpack). This will allow me to charge batteries while moving, instead of being dependant of only setting up my solar panels at each camp, daylight permitting.  After the phone call, we decided to go down the mountain and head for camp.  When we got down from our mountain hike we had lunch before we packed our bags to start our return journey back.  Our group was very happy and we had all accomplished our goals so we were now anxious to get back to Katmandu. The trip will take 5 long days of hiking.  We departed Gorak Shep and made it back to Labouche.  We sat around and played another game of chess before we went to bed.  I have a small tent filled with porters and Sherpas watching me type up this story.  It is very cold out and we are all huddled around a pot of boiling water. Simon and I will play one game of chess to keep us up to 8:30 pm.