Day 5  -  Carry to camp 1

Today is a toughish climb as we are now hitting altitude for the first time - up to Camp 1 at 5,000 mtrs - and doing a carry of most of the food and and gear that we will need for the ascent. The food is both freeze dried (rehydrate in the bag) for high up on the mountain when there is no water and melting snow uses precious gas so neither boiling or washing up are really an option and locally bought pasta and sauces for easy cooking and carbs lower down.

The camp is just over the light grey ridge that is on the mid-left side of the picture above. We are carrying full packs, I a bit over 20kg but I want to push it to see what sort of speeds I can do in comparison to the suggested speeds and also to accelerate my body's acclimatization. On the other hand we are making this attempt as a group so while I can push it for a bit we regroup every 60-90 mins or so, so there is no real chance to test myself against any of the times for the various stage walks. Having said that we are probably the fastest group on the mountain with many adopting the pace on summit day at these much lower altitudes. It will be interesting to see whether they are managing to save much more energy for then or this is in fact their pace at this altitude and they will really struggle higher up.
The final slope up to the camp is mainly scree and very steep - this is a real tester for legs, lungs and mind if you are pushng it! Bear in mind the below picture only shows the second half of that slope.

We spend a bit to time at the new camp to help aclimatise, have a spot of lunch and enjoy the view up to the next col.

The return to Base Camp is quick and fun - the long scree slope up becomes and very quick scree run down. The picture below shows the first half of the final slope together with what remains of the famous 'penitentes' at this stage of the season. Penitentes are wind eroded snow/ice towers formed from large snow fields.  

Then it is just a saunter along the various paths with an empty pack - the traditional cache and carry system. When we get back it is an easy afternoon lounging in the sun and chatting until supper.
We each brought a luxury item along to be brought out and shared with the others at an appropriate moment. I had brought a range of flavoured Korean chocolates and wanted to have these before our taste buds started to turn off as they do at altitude and so brought them out on this final night before we headed up the mountain. Generally ok, but there were a few left and so I took these through to the chefs having checked with the guide that they like spicy food - off the three left, one was a chili chocolate; nice at first but with a delayed and reasonably strong hit of the chilli. Unfortuately it turned out that the cooks in fact did bit like chilli and it was rather amusing to watch their increasingly fractic attempts to find water in a moutain cook tent where anything that is left freezes shortly after dark.