It’s a beautiful day weather wise, blue sky and early sunshine. Ang Galou comes to see us at breakfast to tell us he is really not well and going down to Lukla for a week to try and get better. Up here the body does not recover or mend itself at altitude so it’s a good idea. The helicopter arrived and I wave him off. When the chopper took off, it came straight at me about 30m away and it’s low. I start to think it’s going to take me out so as I wave, I bend my knees and it flies not far above my head. I am very sad because I think he was going to be my climbing Sherpa. But fingers crossed he will be back better when Bob and I have done our first rotation.
We were supposed to go half way into the icefall today but because we had our Puja ceremony it meant the Sherpas could start to carry supplies up to camp one so they all left at 2am to bring up tents, food and fuel ready for us moving up the hill. With Ang Galou gone now there were no Sherpas left to accompany us into the icefall. So after lunch we just practise ladder crossing on a ladder a little bit out from base camp. I had practised my ladder crossing at home with the ladder level on bricks that were all even about 6 inches off the ground. Well this was truly baptism by fire. There were 3 ladders tethered together and the whole thing was on a slope. Not lengthwise but actually the ladder itself was at a tilt so that the right side was higher than the left side and it had started to buckle with it not being level. So we were only going across the first ladder and back again, not the second and third. Using the ropes at the sides is actually really difficult and I prefer the method of crossing like a monkey with hands also on the ladder rungs. Also at home my front crampon points and last points fitted across two rungs so it felt stable. Whereas here, the rungs are too far apart so you have to just balance in the middle of the foot in between crampon points. It’s not good.
There is also a wall of about 20m of sheer ice climbing on front points so we practise going up and down that a few times.
The Sherpas returned from their carry and we find out they actually went to camp 2 and back. These guys are super human. Their strength knows no bounds and they really are the heroes of the big hill. They also inform us it’s really quite a difficult route between camp 1 and camp 2. There is a big sheer wall of ice straight up of 40m. At that elevation, that’s going to be one big obstacle to get over. The road ahead is not going to be easy. I may take that 5% back from my summit chances again.