Sept 19th - Up to 6100m; Back down to Base Camp

19 Sept - The first time I woke up this morning was just after midnight and my head was throbbing. Evidently, we had come up to quickly, perhaps this is the downside of the skis. I guess the simple explanation is that it's part of the acclimitisation process. I did managed to get back to sleep and at 5 am, Tchouky asked me if I wanted to get up. So at about 7 am, we rolled out of the tent. Camp 1 was alive, there were about three different groups heading up to Camp 2 between 6150 and 6400 m. Our plan was just to go as high as possible and then come down to C1 again and spend the night.




My headache seemed to pass and after watching everyone else in gridlock on some of the steeper sections, we decided to sit and wait for a late start. We left at about 9:30 am and headed up. The start is a long up and down traverse, through the glacier, we don't gain much altitude here but it gets us in the right position. The next part is straight climbing, hauling on fixed ropes with an ascender to get up the steeper slopes in the glacier. The fun part was trying to pass the Chinese expedition on a steep slope with about 7 of us on the fixed rope. Clearly a mix of climbers and tourists.We climbed to about 6100 m and then stopped for lunch. We broke out some of the cheese that we brought, travelled really well.



I've always been an advocate of don't do anything new on race day. If you translate this to an expedtion speak, don't do anything new on your expedition. Well, I broke this rule. The comprimise we made with skis is that we're skiing in mountaineering boots but we did find some stiff tongues that attach to make skiing a bit easier. They didn't arrive much before we left so I didn't have time to try. My first go was at 6100 m in some wind blown snow, I skied for about 100 m and then took them off. The downside of this was that I had to walk down most of the way to C1. On the flats, I was back to skiing in my floppy little climbing boots which if we had the video would be an instant entry to a Warren Miller out-take of silly moments on skis.



I was beat so we ditched the plan sleep another night at C1 and came right down to BC. As soon as they rolled out the hot soup, pasta and potato gratin, I thought we were the smartest people on the mountain.