Day 10 - Move to High Camp (4,800m)

Today we are pushing for High Camp from where we will head to the summit in the early hours of tomorrow morning. We head up the steep slope out of camp and the snow is worryingly soft. By the time that we have got to the top of the main slope up to BC I have joined the lead Sherpa and the porters and we have what should be a fairly easy stroll along some rolling slopes before a final steep slope onto the HC plateau.

However, it soon becomes apparent that things aren't going to be so easy. There is only a very thin crust of snow on top of deep, soft snow so we are continually punching through which makes the going pretty slow. In addition the snow is on top of a boulder field so there are a number of invisible, big holes in between the boulders which we drop into as well. The lead Sherpa is pretty light so makes fairly decent progress along the ridges. I come next frequently punching through his footsteps and then convert the mess that I have made into solid footsteps for the porters coming behind me.

This makes for an interesting and different challenge to what I have dealt with before but very tiring and slow. I struggle to see how we can make the summit unless conditions are pretty different higher up. The last team before us came down a couple of days ago for this very reason.

The final straw seems to be the steep slope up to our planned High Camp. We come across a series of the deep holes and finally get to a point where we can't find a way forward - I am now up to my chest in snow and even then falling down at times in holes between boulders! The rest of the group has now caught up and we decide to find somewhere to set up camp. We actually get a pretty picturesque spot in the end.

Our ultimately failed attempt up the slop

Heading back to a sheltered spot with solid snow on the ground for our High Camp

High Camp

High Camp with our failed route and the summit in the background

 

The Summit but it may well not be possible to get there

After a spot of lunch, the Sherpas are going to have another look to see if they can find some better conditions round here and if so have a look at conditions higher up the mountain as if they do not improve there isn't going to be much point in setting out.

We retreat to our tents in the afternoon to rest and get out of the weather. It is either very hot when the sun is shining as it reflects off the slopes around us as well or very cold when the sun goes behind a cloud. We have also got a 1am start ahead of us so it is important to recuperate and rehydrate.

At about 3pm the weather closes in and it starts to snow pretty hard for the next few hours. At about 5 the Sherpas return having had a pretty tough time repeatedly falling through holes and generally walking in deep snow much as we experienced in the morning. That pretty much does it for our chances of a summit attempt - but at least we are going to get a night sleeping at just under 5,000m which is very useful.

The snow starts to fall harder and soon we are in the midst of a thunder and lightning storm with avalanches being triggered which is all rather exciting given that we are perched on the side of a mountain and our tents have the only source of metal in the area!

 

Snow falling heavily at High Camp - little chance of going anywhere now!

The evening is spent very amusingly with all of us in one tent playing name that tune with my collections of 80s hits and power ballads.