The shower tent
our motley crew: me,Baab,Pena,Bethany and Craig 
climbing through the icefall 
Im that little orange dot in the middle 
A mish mash of snow and ice
Today we make a little foray into the icefall. It’s a bit of an eye opener. Paradoxically it’s magical and like a winter wonderland with beautiful ice sculptures but appears somewhat threatening at the same time. I walk through with awe, wonderment and trepidation. We climb a little way into it on the fixed ropes. Some of the parts are sheer ice and my ice climbing technique is not the best. I don’t like trusting the crampons on hard, blue ice. I like the snow. Climbing these sections makes you very breathless quickly and when you reach the top you have to stop and catch your breath back and let the heart rate settle back down. We go for a couple of hours and still don’t reach the first ladder. It starts to snow so we decide to turn and go back. Anyway lunch will soon be ready. We rappel down the steep sections and return to camp. I take a photo of the view of the tents from the icefall gateway. I think this will be the most wondrous sight in the world in couple weeks when we start to go up to camp.
So far, the plan is to travel back down the trek to Lobouche, stay in a Tea house there one night, then move to a high camp on Loubouche mountain and climb it to sleep just under the summit for two nights to help acclimatisation. This should take out one rotation on the mountain and be one less time we have to travel through the icefall, one of the most dangerous parts of Everest where most of the accidents happen. Moving through the ice fall is a game of Russian roulette, it’s an active glacier on the move constantly. We are reminded of this at night when we hear big chucks dropping off. So we should return to base camp around the 14th ready for the puja which we hear could be either the 15th or the 17th. We don’t know because the stars have to be aligned for it. I’m excited for the ceremony but first things first, we have to get up Loubouche. I have climbed it already so shouldn’t be a problem.
Having seen the extent of the challenge out here close up I rate my chances of getting to the top at 70/30 against right now. But I’m going to do my best to buck these numbers and hopefully as I move up the mountain I will gain more confidence. I am under no illusion that this will be one beast of a challenge and take a mammoth effort.
I’m relaxing in my tent when Baab shouts through the tent walls between us ‘Linda, there’s an Ncell signal!’. I get my Nepali phone out straight away and call Mum in Northen Ireland. My brother answers and Mum is up the town lol. Anyway we have a nice chat and he can tell Mum that I phoned.
Afterwards I go the shower tent and have a ‘hot water in a bucket’ shower whereby you use a mug to pour the water over you. No expense is spared here lol.