16 Sept - We're here, finally. 4900 m of fun. It's what you think a base camp should be, or at least what I think it should be. We're perched on glacial moraine between two glaciers with a nice stream running beside us. Tchouky explained that it was better to be higher up so you don't get the run off from the other camps, I think we're as high as you can go. There's actually about 100 m difference between the first camp and ours. Given that we will probably be climbing at least four or five times from here, I'd rather do the 100 m just once. I think there's probably a lot of people that get altitude sickness here. In hindsight, what we did was ingenious because we went steadily from 3500 m up to over 5400 m. The classic approach is to arrive in Samagaon, rest for a few days, then come up to base camp. The problem with that is that it's about 1400 m all in one go.


So this morning was a repeat of last week, a crew of porters at the lodge, all trying to get a load. I've always had respect for these people but today it went to a new level. The path out of Samagaon starts nicely, then about halfway it turns and just goes straight up. With their 30 kg, they all just marched on bravely and then turned around to go back home and collect what would be the equivalent of 15 Euros. As an aside, our whiskey drinking friend did show up this morning but didn't seem to make the grade for the run up here.

Unfortunately, when we arrive the whole area was in a bank of clouds so we couldn't see anything. They have all cleared now and we can see the silhouette of the summit and the millions of stars. If I ever do this again, someone remind me to bring a star chart. I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning to see the summit up close.

One of the many things that Kathryn sent me with was a big red notebook with strict instructions not to look at it until I arrived at base camp. She beats me so badly when I don't follow instructions so I have learned to comply. It's a collection of messages from family and friends about the trip. Thanks to everyone who took the time to send something, it was really touching and will be nice to have for the upcoming weeks.



I'm now fully set up on a prime piece of Manaslu glacier real estate, summit views, running water and all the comforts of home. I managed to talk Sean into buying me a luxury therma-rest in Seattle and dragging it up to Canada when we were there in August. Tchouky had told me I should get one for base camp and one for the higher camps. When I asked which one for base camp, he said: "The biggest and thickest one you can buy." So I looked on their website and found the Dreamtime XL, three layers of full luxury. I did raise an eyebrow at the 3.5 kg weight but then quickly thought Tchouky wouldn't steer me wrong. It turns out, Sean had to pack an extra bag to get this thing up to Canada and it barely fit in my biggest kit bag. I am loving it though. Combined with my little therma-rest camp chair, it's like having a lazy-boy in my tent. It's already been put to the nap test this afternoon.



Tomorrow the rest of our group will be coming up from Samagaon, we'll be out on little shakedown cruise with the skis to see how they perform. Word here is that the fixed ropes have been installed up to Camp 2 which is at about 6500 m. We're aiming for sleeping at Camp 1 the day after tomorrow. I'll try and get a couple of pictures up tomorrow, reception seems to be much better up here.