Apologies for the long pause. So here is a longer post.
No excuse as I have only one thing to do: climb a mountain and blog about it… well hat’s actually two things…
I’m back in Kathmandu after my second rotation, as I was suffering a lot from the stomach pains. No more parasites, but just pain. My body is seriously deterioating after 6 weeks at high altitude.
Went up to camp 2 again for three nights but came back down and flew straight to Kathmandu, to recover and see a stomach specialist, in order to get through the summit push next week.
Yes that’s right, our window is early next week!
What’s the situation?
Well there was a small windows yesterday and today before the jetstreams came back.
Yesterday saw 9 sherpas, many of ours, finish fixing the technical summit parts and summit (we need the prayer flags on top before we go there!).
First time in 2 years, somebody was summitting. It was right that it should be Nepali.
Today saw three westerners summit: two Brits, Kenton Cool (see earlier post) and his client and a Mexican, David Lliano Gonzalez, whom I spoke to last week at base camp: climbing without Oxygen for the first time on his 5th Everest climb. A wonderful and humble climber. Chapeau!.
If anybody tells you that Everest is a walk in the park, trust me, they don’t know what they are talking about. Everybody who’s been up the Lhotse face will confirm that at between 30 & 55deg. for 900m (at over 6700m) this is a a hell of a climb.
Since three of us are climbing two mountains instead of one, we need a larger window. Plan is to get back to EBC in 2-3 days and get ready to climb to the four camps before the summit push!
Will keep you posted. We’re horribly close!