This morning I realised the proper or rather probable reason for my little internal melt down yesterday, time of the month. So it’s a good time for it to happen now when I have couple easy days ahead.
After an early breakfast, we took down the tents and packed our bags to descend back to Loubouche and then climb back up to base camp. Bob went for a pee and came back clutching his side. He’d slid over in the hard ice and was hurting. Chawang took some things out of his bag to carry and we climbed down the rocks. There’s quite a bit of scrambling down from high camp and along the way Bob slipped again. It was quite difficult for him with not being mobile with two arms. It certainly was tricky footing. I may not have Bob’s excellent rope skills but I’m sure footed. I attribute this to the years of family outings to Bloody Bridge near Newcastle in Northern Ireland. Dad would have all three of us kids, Paul, Delmar and myself up there scrambling over rocks and boulders, swimming in rock pools from we were no age. You soon learn which are the best rocks to climb on. Always look for the big solid rocks, not putting your feet in between them on the little stones.
We descended to Loubouche, had some tea and brunch as it was only 10am and there we met a lady called Billi Bierling.
Once upon a time there was a rather eccentric but highly intelligent British lady called Liz Hawley (you can google). She started a data base for all climbers out here, where they were from and if they managed to summit, and if not, what went wrong. She then needed a helper as the amounts of climbers grew year by year. So in stepped Billi, a German lady who just wanted to live in Nepal. Liz was rather difficult to work for and on one occasion Billi appeared to have been fired when she said she wanted to climb Everest herself. (She has managed to bag 6 of the 8000m peaks now). Anyway the next day Liz called to Billi to ask where she was and Billi said she thought she’d been fired. To which Liz replied “ My dear, why would I fire you, you’re far too useful!” It’s also a non paid job and to collect the data there appears to be no system in place. It involves Billi running all over the place at base camp and the trekking route to find climbers and collect their stats. In January this year Liz passed away (she was 94) so now it is only Billi doing the chasing. I told Billi she should have an office based in Kathmandu and climbers could go to her to be included in the data base. Bob suggested she get her info from the government who issue the permits which is the better idea but they probably wouldn’t cooperate.
Anyway it was nice to meet such a stalwart of the climbing community out here and I’m rather proud to be in the data base. I asked her how many climbers from Northern Ireland have summited but she didn’t know as she doesn’t distinguish NI from the UK. So we’re all just British but she said she would try and find out and gave us the details of her base in Kathmandu so we can visit her after the trip to say either yay or nay. I pray to God that I can go into the yay camp. The stats for last year was about a 51% success rate both in males and females. Last year out of 59 females 31 made the summit. The numbers were far higher for males but the success percentage rate was the same. We didn’t ask how many died.
We then made our way back to base camp which is now known as civilisation. Or also ‘home’.
We get the news that our base camp cook Dawa is sick and has had to go down to Kathmandu. Also some days ago, our cook for camp two who trekked in with us, Galou had also been sick and he’d also gone down but now he was back although he could hardly speak so his throat is obviously not better yet. It appears they both have the same throat infection which is worrying. The last thing we need is an epidemic within the kitchen staff. Galou may still have to go down again.
We crawl into our tents to find they are totally empty. When we left base camp, a big group of 14 trekkers from Canada where coming in to share our kitchen but they were to have their own tents, toilet tent and dining tent. With them are to be 3 climbers. So it is obvious that they put some of them in our tents. We had to collect our things which we left behind in our little tented homes from the storage tent and we will have to set up our houses all over again the way we like it. Also they have been using our toilet as we left it in a good state and now it is terrible. The barrel to ‘poo’ in is really big, I am not sure how people can miss it. God bless them if they had to go in the tiny CMCs on Denali. Do they not know where their arse is? There is also no toilet paper left in the little tent. We instantly decide we don’t like them so thank god they are leaving tomorrow morning. We thought the trekkers were only staying one night but they stayed for two.
We also get the news that the route to camp two is now fixed, there are two sections of three ladders tied together to cross and another huge crevasse with 5 or 6 ladders tied together. OMG, that’s a very big hole in the ground to be going across. Alan Arnette’s Blog (which he does every year on what’s happening on Everest, you can google it) says that the route from camp one to camp two is slower than normal.
Bob went to see the doctor here at base camp and they think it’s a small tear in his rotator cuff. We have a couple days of rest now anyway and it shouldn’t affect the bigger picture.