Friday 18 May – Day 50 – Lhotse

 That weird yellow creature is me ascending the Japanese Couloir

Shows how steep the couloir is on the summit of Lhotse

 With Ang Gelu  The Lhotse Camp 4 where we had a rest looking down into the Western Cwm

So it’s the normal drill again. Up at stupid o’clock, drink a coffee and get suited up. I go outside for a pee before putting my harness on. It’s such a palaver. My hands are freezing in the glove liners but I can’t get zip of the rainbow flap of my underwear all in one closed. I can’t seem to grip the little zip and not only my fingers now hit my arse is starting to freeze. Only one thing for it, I dive back inside the tent lying down on my front and say to Ang Gelu,’ can you zip me up please’. Confronted by a naked ass, all he can say is, ‘oh my Gad’ lol as he pulls the zipper closed.
Harness on and off we go. We’re a bit later than we’d planned leaving as it’s about 4:30am. First we have to make our way from Everest Camp four back to Lhotse Camp 4 which is back over Juniper Hill again. We traverse and descend quite a bit to get to the Camp. Then we start to climb. It’s about 5:30am now and it’s daylight. I’m very happy. I feel quite content. I’m warm, I just think to myself let’s just get as far as we can. Even if I don’t make the top I’m still happy. After a couple of hours I’ve been moving quite quickly and I ask Ang Gelu how many hours roughly? He said three maybe and I was like ‘whaaat?’ Another three? I thought we’d been doing well. I thought I could see the top. Then he said ok, maybe 2. So I continue on. In about two hours (I’ve been working it out in my head) I Ask him again ‘so is it about 20 minutes now?’ He replies ‘when you can see the top, that’s the top’. So on we go. We’re continuing up the really steep Japanese couloir which feels like forever. What I thought was the top turned a corner and went on on and on. It’s relentless but I like it because it’s straight forward ascending. No tricky climbing like Everest.
Seven hours after we started I suddenly saw the top. There were the prayer flags – on top of a big pile of bloody rocks. ‘You said there was no rock climbing’ I hollered over to Ang Gelu. We laughed. I got closer to the rocks and the bottom level was like a shelf you could step up on to. On it was a man sitting with full downsuit, harness, jumar, crampons, everything intact. He was dead. His face was perfectly preserved and his expression was mesmerising. His handsome face was turned to the side, mouth open like he was gasping for breath. The hopeless pain in his face was apparent and his eyes were open but they were black. We had to go right past him. Ang Gelu told me he tried to summit without oxygen and obviously just ran out of steam but he’d got to the summit rocks. He was 15m from the Summit when he sat down and died gasping for breath. As I pass him, I pat his knee. I just wanted to tell him that it’s alright.
So we climb the rocks and reach the summit. The summit is too steep to stand up, we have to lie against it. It’s like climbing up a wall to the top of it. I put my hand over the edge of snow at the top and look over. Holy Cow. There is absolutely nothing there. It’s thin air right to the bottom. Oh my Lord. Here we go again. Ang Gelu is taking photos and right now I just want to climb down. He’s radioing Craig to say we’re on the summit but Craig is not answering. ‘We can talk to Craig later, let’s get down now’ I plead. Then the radio crackled into life and we are able to inform Craig that we are on the Summit.
I’m so pleased to start rappelling down and I have to be careful around the body. I don’t want to stick my crampons in his legs. I manoeuvre around him and we continue descending down the Japanese Couloir. We reach the Lhotse Camp four and the sun is high in the sky now and it’s very hot. We sit down beside the climbers who are here for the night, and the congratulate us on making the summit. I don’t tell them I did Everest the previous day.

We have a rest in the hot sun here and then we descend all the way back down to Camp Two. It’s such a long day and we only teach camp two around 6pm with the sun starting to go down. Camp two looks very different from the last time I was here. A lot more snow has melted and some ice has melted and turned to rock on the bottom of the Lhotse face.