Day 42 - Back to BC

This is the long slog back down the Ronghok glacier. Things are going fine until we get trapped behind a slow yak train for about 40 mins.

Setting sun at BC

But we make it in about 6 hours which isn't too bad. This gives me time to think about how things are going and what I can do to improve them. Basically this comes down to exercise and diet.

The food has been pretty miserable on the trip so far - we have been joking about the iconic meal of the trip which which has been spaghetti, rice and potatoes and some form of potato sauce. Although carbs are good on a mountain, on a trip of this length there needs to be variety and taste to help deal with the natural struggles with appetite that you have at altitude. We are all finding that we are eating pretty minimally given the poor food and whilst you can get by like this when you are resting you have nothing in the tank when you head up the mountain. I am going to do something about our diet when we get to camp - I assume that this will mean that we will need to pay for some decent food but at least this will improve us on the mountain.

Connected to this, is that my metabolism pretty much switches off when I am resting for a few days and it can take a couple of days for it to normalise when I start being active again and by this time I have got pretty exhausted. The solution here is to be exercising or at least starting to exercise towards the end of the rest period to avoid such a shock to the system when I head up the mountain.

When we get back to camp I chat to the cook / camp manager. As is typical for this expedition, the generator is broken again and the main battery through which we run the solar panel continues to drain all the power making it next to useless and so we still have virtually no power in the camp. And yes, we have to pay for any decent food that we want - we have also finished the last tin of sardines so there is nothing really left in the kitchen apart from carbs and lentils - so I get the cook to order in a lot of chicken and pay about $200 for it! This is very unimpressive for what is the key rest and powering up week of the expedition that is meant to be preparing us for our ascent of the highest mountain in the world!! But it is better to just take it on the chin and pay to sort things out to ensure I summit rather than keep the money and complain later when we just haven't been in the right condition for our summit attempt.