Tent time Oh. My. God. The Lhotse face is the gift that’s just keeps on giving lol. Straight out of camp it’s another 600m of vertical ascent up the rest of the face. It’s very steep and then it tapers off to the left at the top and traverses over towards Everest.
Oh the way up this last part we were moving so slowly held up by one guy moving slowly and stopping a lot. It was very frustrating. I think the people behind him should have passed. There were about 5 people between us. I was looking up watching him when the guy behind him keeled over. He was stopped by the rope as his safety was attached an actually he was clutching the rope to his chest. He was just lying on the snow facing backwards now and it didn’t look good. He was exhausted. His Sherpas were beside him and they got him up and started to move him down. It looked awful. His left foot was obviously not in his boot properly as it was all bent over at the bottom and his heel was more like half way down. I pointed down to it and said to his sherpas, ‘that’s dangerous, his boot not on right’, they just ignored me and kept pushing him down the rope. Mind you it wasn’t the place to start taking boots off. They’ll probably sort it out on a flatter bit. But I’m not too sure where that’s going to be.
Then I turned my attention to the really slow man. I said to the guy in front that the people behind should pass at a rope junction. Eventually the man in front said Ok come with me and we passed the group together.
At the top of the Lhotse face as I said we then traverse to the left towards Everest and over the famous ‘yellow band’ which is strips of yellow rock. I must look up what this rock is, it’s so out of place up here amongst all the snow and grey rock. After the traverse there is a hill called Juniper Hill. Well if this was at home it would be a mountain on it’s own lol. We make the traverse and then ascend this rocky hill. I’m a few metres from the very top of Juniper Hill and there’s a guy with blond spiky hair sitting. He’s obviously waiting for me to get to the top so he can descend down my rope. I get to him and pass him, then there’s a rocky outcrop on the other side. It’s a good place to have a rest. Me and Ang Gelu sit here. Another man approaches and I ask him if he knows what time it is. He looks at his watch and says 3 o’clock. I say ‘thankyou, did you summit?’ And he says ‘yes, that was number 13’. I congratulated him and asked his name, he said ‘Kenton’ ah so now I know it’s Kenton Cool, I asked ‘Where’s Ben Fogle?’ And he says, ‘you just passed him’. What a shame I didn’t pay more notice to the blond spiky haired man waiting to descend on my rope. I would have told him well done. We move on now traversing the rocky parts and moving slightly down. As we round a bend there they are- the orange tents. By now I know, it’s the beautiful orange tents of everyone else. I don’t know why we never have tents up. The other tents aren’t tied down here. Every time I get to the Camp site, I’m tired and I’m jealous of everyone else arriving and crawling in while I sit on the snow or a rock and huddle against the wind waiting for Our guys to put the tent up. They do a brilliant job but this is my only gripe. I don’t understand the logistics really.
As I move towards the tent I pass a guy just standing. As I pass him he holds his hand out to me. I think he’s really struggling cos we are about 15 metres from the tents. I take his hand and walk with him holding him. I see his Sherpa guide signalling to him so I know where his tent is. At least he had one erected. I walk him slowly over to it. His guide puts the thumb up to me as a a gesture of thanks . I give a thumbs up back and turn and walk back to sit on a rock and wait for a little home to be erected.
We now have five hours to eat, drink water, rest and wait for nightfall to start the epic summit journey. Personally I’d rather sleep the night on oxygen and go tomorrow evening. I feel really exhausted and a ten hour climb tonight in the dark is not really something I relish right now. I guess I just have to get on with it and take it a step at a time and hope to God that I make the summit.
Its 9pm now and we start moving about in the tent after lying for hours with thoughts running through my head. Now we start to Boil water and have coffee and get ready it’s very real. I’m so scared I think I could burst Into tears. I guess I’m scared of the unknown, what lies ahead, the mental game of can I do it? Can I live with myself if I don’t? It’s so cold and uncomfortable up here. This is what it’s all been for though, it’s all come to this night. Three months of killing myself on the stair master, hogging it at my local gym. A lot of money paid, a lot of mountains climbed over the course of 15 years to get to this one night. This is the reason I went to Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, Aconcagua and Denali. I didn’t care about those mountains, they were purely stepping stones to get here. I didn’t care if I summited them or not, just warm up exercises for the main event. And now here I am and I’m terrified. I think to myself I should feel lucky because I have made this opportunity that other people would love to have. I know I will do my best and give it my all.
We leave about 11.30pm and I’m glad we’re a little bit late. It means less time spent climbing in the dark. Ang Gelu said I’m climbing quickly so the slow people will go around 8pm and 9pm and we don’t want to get caught too much behind them moving slowly in the cold.