We woke up at 1.30am and had breakfast in the dining tent with the heater on as it was so cold. We got geared up and Bob left with his Sherpa Neema just after 2:30am. I was to leave half an hour after with my Sherpa Ang Galou and we set off just before 3 am.
It was cold but we kept moving, up and round and round all the huge ice sculptures. I looked up at one point and thought if Disney made a movie set in Santa’s grotto then this is what it would look like. We took it slowly and steadily. I stopped twice for drinks from my flask of hot chocolate but this was also to try and get the weight in my back pack down. A litre of water weighs a kilo and I’d happily drink one. I started out with two litres liquid. After a couple of hours, daylight broke and we could switch off the head torches. Some of the way was quite treacherous and narrow ledges with sheer drops. I made sure I clipped in at all times to the mountain for safety. And the ladders, oh my god. Some were alright but the horizontal ones are horrific. The ropes to either side are not tight, they’re just loose on the ground. So when your Sherpa goes over first he picks up those ends and holds the ropes tights from the far side so then you have to pull them up from behind you tight as you move across. Some crevasses were really wide and I was so glad to get off them. One ladder was single and it had one rope only at one side. This was awful. I really don’t like the ladder crossings. Anyway I eventually caught up with Bob. My back was sore from the heavy pack which appeared to be getting heavier the longer I carried it even though I was doing my best to drink the kilos lol. We swapped Sherpas at this point and I carried on with Neema and Ang Galou stayed with Bob. Progress had been pretty slow and at times my fingers were numb. I had to bang my hands together when I could and wiggle my fingers to get the blood flowing. Shortly afterwards I was starting to wonder how far it was to Camp One and a guy was coming down so I looked up to ask him and I saw Mark. I said hi Mark. He looked at me. I said ‘you’re Mark right, it’s Linda’ he laughed and said ‘ah I thought I might bump into you somewhere here his year’. Mark was on the Everest training month long trip I did, same trip I met Bob on back in 2016 when we came out here, trekked to Everest base camp and climbed Island Peak and Loubouche.
I said Bob’s coming up just behind, you’ll see him. He told me he was with Tim Moosedale and I said we were with Craig Van Hoy. We had a little hug, wished each other good luck and I moved on.
I was starting to think where the hell is Camp one now I’m really tired. We’d been out of the ice fall and walking through the western cwm for some time and I couldn’t see any tents as far as the eye could see. Then all of a sudden they were right there to the right hidden by a big ridge of snow. Only between us were actually 3 big snow ridges. So up and down, and up and down, and up and down again we went. And finally I reached the tents. I said to Neema, ‘Hallelujah, we made it, which tents are ours?’ Neema pointed to a lump of snow and said ‘sit here’. So I did and I’m glad I did cos what he said next I think I’d have fallen over the side of the mountain in disbelief if I’d been standing up. He states, ‘our tents aren’t here, Sonam is bringing two tents down from Camp Two now’
Like WTF!??!!!!!
How could we have no tents. The plan was made. They knew we were coming up here to sleep two nights. I took my thermarest off the bottom of my back pack so I could lie against the clump of snow and rest my back. Like how on earth could this go wrong?! Somewhere was a serious breakdown in comms. I sat for almost an hour on the clump of snow when finally Bob appeared. I had reached Camp One just before 10am, so seven hours of climbing. Bob appeared almost an hour after and saw me and asked ‘Linda, what are you doing?’ I said ‘ well Bob, we have no tents here’. He couldn’t believe it. Neema pointed to an empty tent beside us and said ‘this is the tent of my friend, you can lie in here until our tents arrive’. So we did. We had some hot tea but I was now too tired and cold to eat.
Finally the tents arrived and they put them up. Bob and I crawled into ours and Neema and Ang Galou got into theirs. Sonam came to say bye, he was descending to base camp and we thanked him for bringing the tents down. We will have to find out from Craig how this happened and what exactly went wrong.
After thawing out in our sleeping bags, some hot soup, Pringles and Jelly babies later we were starting to feel alive again albeit a little ragged.
We will have dinner of fried potatoes at 6pm and then I’ll sleep for England. I managed 3 and half hours last night.