Okay we’re outtie. NO MORE PRESS RELEASES AND BOOTH SCHEDULES. We’re done. We leave the Beat in the hands of trusted operative Mark Coale, and a new operative, S. Stahl, who has taken on the job of Beat COPYEDITOR. Thank this wonderful person — he’s a demon for commas, which we usually aren’t.

We’re hitting ground zero tonight, setting up base camp and starting up the north face at about 0900 hours tomorrow. We hope to start our ascent sometime tomorrow night, and summit on Saturday. Our preparations have mostly gone well — we’re provisioned with a ton of Vietnamese instant coffee, dried apricots and flax seed. The only setback so far — frigging Apple doesn’t let you make your own ringtones or even import ones YOU LEGITIMATELY BOUGHT, so our sweet new iPhone won’t be able to ring out with our creepy new Amon Tobin ringtones in the middle of panels. That is sad.

We’ll be Twittering, posting from mobile locales and keeping you up to date with all the snark we can scarf up. Happy trails!