Day 24 - Move to Interim Camp (5,800m)

We are up and ready to leave in good time but as previously feared there are problems with the yaks in that we need far more than have been booked. This is all being organised by the local team although I imagine that there is quite a culture clash with the Chinese run CTMA that run this side of the mountain. A couple of other groups are moving up the mountain today so the scene is fairly chaotic with all sorts of people and yaks wandering about.

After a bit we are told that everything has been sorted out - on further pressing this means that we will use the available yaks today and other ones later. The big discussion then is what is going to be left behind - some emergency medical oxygen is high on our list of priorities as we will be hitting 7,000m in the next few days! Anyway, after impressing a few key items we head off hoping that nothing too significant will get left behind.

Apparently the hike to intermediate camp should take about 6 hours and the yaks will do it in 4 hours. We need to be there by about 5 as the sun goes behind the nearby mountains shortly after that and the temperature plummets then. I have packed a pretty heavy rucksack as I am still using these days as training and to help force my acclimatisation.

We walk as a group for the first hour along the flat glacial valley but then we turn left up a side valley but this is much steeper and trickier terrain and so end up spread out as we wind our way up the valley. There is a well established path but it becomes really very steep in a number of places which are very tough as our bodies struggle for the oxygen required for this degree of exertion at such an altitude. In fact the walk takes us a bit over 3 hrs to 4.5hrs and we have been overtaking yak trains all morning.

Interim Camp is very windy and I try to take some shelter in one of the yak / tent placements whilst waiting for the others to arrive. These are small flat platforms made on the hillside that will accommodate either a yak or a tent - whilst they do provide a bit of protection from the harsh wind, they are rather pungent!
Over the rest of the afternoon various groups of people and yaks turn up, have a congratulatory chat with each other and then get in their tents out of the wind. There must have been a lot of further discussion over the yaks before they were able to set off as we only just get our tents up by the effective sunset at about 17:45 - over 5 hours after I arrived at camp. I get the feeling that our fun and games with this move are not yet over.

Whilst we are getting some nice panoramic views of the surrounding mountains, we are mainly walking in and amongst moraine. We will gain altitude pretty rapidly from now and that should start to provide much more beautiful sights and photos.

Trudging along the valley floor with the Rongbuk glacier to our right

Heading up the much steeper East Rongbuk glacier

Intermediate Camp - not the best of places

Day 23 - BC Rest Day

I feel a lot better this morning and my stats are much improved. The big task for the day is organising the mountain food - ie freeze dried meals, snacks and drinks.

Our mountain food 'set out' in the mess tent

Then after lunch it is radios and the Ganmov bag (this is a very large, tough bag which you can put a person in and pump up to create an effective 2,000m drop in altitude which is vital when for some reason that person isn't able to get to a lower altitude). Keeping in tradition with the rest of the trip we have a serious problem today - one of the base station sets turns out to be an FM one rather than the VHF system that the individual radios run on. Luckily there is another group coming out here next week to do the lower part of Everest and their list of spares and replacements to bring out for us is getting really rather long (solar panel, toilet tent, high altitude medicine, heaters) I am not sure what would have happened if they were not coming out!

The afternoon is final packing for the mountain.

Day 22 - Acclimatisation Day 2 (6,000 mtrs)

Today we are heading up one of the nearby slopes to get to about 6,000m as our final preparation before starting our rotations up the mountain.

I feel pretty poor in the morning and have very little energy - this really doesn't bode well. We have done virtually nothing for about a week now and so my appetite and metabolism seem to have greatly reduced. This is something I have been monitoring as I am concerned as to how I will fare on the long rests between our rotations up the mountain. A couple of days will be great for recovery but then I need to start exercising lightly to avoid this lapse into a state of inactivity. Although I think that I am a bit ill which is obviously going to exacerbate matters.

We head up a fairly steep scree slope that turns into a boulder field which is tough going. The few people that we meet have turned round at 5,700 and are surprised that we are heading higher up. We carry on plodding on and then come across a body - a middle aged Chinese lady who is wholly inappropriately dressed for the conditions and seems to have curled up with a blanket and then frozen to death on the mountain side. We build a small cairn for her and take a GPS reading so that we can alert the authorities when we get down. This creates a rather sombre mood and reinforces the point that our expedition is now getting serious and that mistakes up here can have fatal consequences.

We stay at 6,000m for about half an hour and then head down as some pretty nasty looking weather is coming down the valley. I am now feeling very drained and quite unwell and my ankle starts to react to the poor terrain so descend very slowly indeed - it really isn't very enjoyable.

Enjoying our acclimatisation break

Bad weather coming down the valley so time to leave!

Heading down in quite dramatic conditions

View back to BC from the top

View of BC from above - our camp site is the bottom of the middle cluster

We have a quick hot drink when we get back and then I head to bed for a couple of hours before supper to try and recover a bit. Supper is pretty good - roast chicken - but I then head back to bed soon after.

I have got a bit of a fever and feel very shivery and just plain exhausted. My stats (oxygen saturation and heart beats per minute) are quite a lot off from the norm so some rest should do me good - tomorrow is a rest day which should really help as you really don't want to head up the mountain in such a state.

We have been having ongoing problems with the mess tent heaters which means that we are all cold every evening and end up donning our down gear. This is pretty disappointing for what is meant to be a well provisioned camp and adds to the general frustration - there is a decent solar panel which provides a direct current and so needs to run through a battery to be converted into an alternating current - this battery however is faulty and so there is very little power that comes through it. There is also not much fuel for the generator so we can only have it running for short periods each day. This is really quite a contrast to the well lit, heated and powered camps all round us!

Day 21 - BC Rest Day

Today is another rest day (quite a few of these now) and whilst there are plenty of spare days in the schedule these are more for weather than for acclimatising below 5,500!

 

Our two blue loo tents and the orange shower tent

Still plenty more barrels and crates to sort through

Our mess tent from the outside

Anyhow, this provides more time for organising - today it is the gas and oxygen bottles. Although I am going for an oxygen less summit, I am still having some stashed on the mountain as a backup.

Sorting through the oxygen bottles

Oxygen mask and goggles make it pretty hard to see who is underneath! 

The weather improves today with clear skies and little wind giving us out first good views of Everest but the wind picks up over the afternoon leading to another chilly night.

Everest from Base Camp.

The afternoon and evening take on a very somber tone as news starts to come through of the disaster on the South Side and what is proving to be the worst day in history on Everest! Quite a few of us know people who are probably involved - in the chaos of such events it takes a long time for facts to emerge but we do manage to get messages back home to reassure friends and family that we are safe and not caught up in the tragedy.

Day 20 - Acclimatisation Walk (5,500m)

Because we were unable to even attempt the summit of Naya Kanga, we are quite a bit behind in out acclimatising schedule. We go for an excellent hike up a frozen river which is great for getting our technical footwork going as well. The afternoon is more organising, planning and also a comms discussion.

Heading up the frozen river

Acclimatisation break at the top

Heading back down

Mini frozen waterfalls

Final part of the descent plus a view of the various base camps and the tongue of the Rombok glacier on the left 

Shower set-up

Day 19 - Base Camp Rest Day

We get up with the sun and after breakfast continue to organise the camp - checking through what was freighted out here and getting the various electronics and comms systems set up - or at least trying to! There seems to be problems with most things we look at and don't get much finalised today.

In the BC mess tent

Day 18 - Tingri to Base Camp

We go for a walk to a lookout point giving us a good view of the valley and mountains including Choy Oyu and our first views of Everest. Then we head off at about half ten having sent the truck (with all the equipment) ahead.

 

Himalayan view point - Everest over my head and Cho Oyu the large mass just to the right of centre

Close up of Everest with the usual high winds sweeping snow off the summit

Close up to Cho Oyu



Wandering through a market on the way back - walking pole in hand in case of problems with dogs

We come across the truck after a few hours having suffered something catastrophic - we can't work our what this is but it is clear that the truck can't continue. The team seem rather blasee about this which is pretty frustrating a we keep losing days but then they realise that they have not told us that a replacement truck is on its way and lo and behold one arrives after about 10 mins much to our great surprise - the advantage of using the Chinese Tibetan Mountaineering Association!

We then set about transferring all the gear from one truck to the other - which is quite a bit smaller. This turns out to be a great mix of Western planning and organisation (plus a bit of brawn) with the locals getting stuck in and bodging anything that didn't really work.

The local villagers appear to enjoy watching us work and take great interest in my bare legs - for some reason this develops into throwing stones at them when I am concentrating on something else and then dissolving into fits of giggles when I turn to glare at them. 



Transferring equipment tot he new truck

Tying everything into the new and smaller truck!

As we head up the Rongbuk valley, we come to the famous Rongbuk monastery from where we get our first close view of Everest itself.

Rongbuk Monastery

And their TV satellite dish - good use of the money donated by all the desperately poor local Tibetans!!

Everest - it looks huge and daunting from here - going to be a tough climb!

and after that on to BC where we start setting up camp - or at least as much as we can before night drew in.


Starting to erect camp

Inside of a tent (bit too neat to be mine). Comfy sleeping mat and space for all our gear.

Setting up camp is not all plain sailing as as the zips to my vestibule are broken and pretty much all of the tents are missing guy ropes and so we had to use all our spares - we just have to hope that we have no problems higher up the mountain; not exactly the way to start such an expedition!!

Then a few more camp chores, supper and bed. The pillow and extra blanket I bought make an excellent extra addition to my tent and keep me pretty warm despite the temperature in the tent falling to about -10c!