Tag: Everest South Face

Nothing fazes Raul. Allan has been also watching DVDs, and after many tries there is still hope he will get to watch Babel before we leave Pangboche. Sharon is ?Little Miss Chatterbox? and she entertains trekkers who come into the lodge with her wit and really ?good? jokes (honest). As for Chris (me), I?ve been watching DVDs but also playing on my Nintendo DS each day doing brain training and Sudoku (if I don?t do it daily, Dr Kawashima tells me off).Sharon and Chris have at times gone down to the Internet café together to check emails and the news around the world. Not sure why but yesterday we found ourselves walking back howling Justin Beiber?s ?Baby? song. For the record, Sharon knew MANY words and Chris knew about seven? and they were all ?Baby?.Last night, Sharon and Allan practiced a few 70?s and 80?s disco moves in the lodge, in readiness for our end of trip party. Lucky for Sumit, Raul and Rabin, they did not have to witness the moves as they had already retired to bed. With the passing of days, the original Raul is emerging from behind the sunburn he experienced in the Western CWM.Early this morning, the sun came out thankfully and the team set off up the hill to the Pangboche Monastery for a ?puja? ceremony with the local lama, Lama Chirring Dorje, who is a reincarnated lama. He is part of the family at whose lodge we are staying in Pangboche and we were fortunate today to receive further blessings for our climb. We also attended with Lama Geshi, the most senior local lama, and he blessed us all, and from both lamas we left with the traditional ?khatas? around our necks.

Our afternoon will likely be spent with music, more DVDs, resting, and packing our duffels ready to head back up the valley to Everest Base Camp tomorrow morning (6th), stopping first at Lobuche overnight and then heading onward to EBC (7th).Whilst we have been down the valley, the Sherpa guides have been working between Everest Base Camp (EBC) and South Col (Camp 4) ferrying loads of supplies to higher camps in readiness for our summit push. Their working days have also been peppered with important rest days. These guys and their counterparts in other teams are the true heroes of the mountain. Their strength is incredible and their commitment to the task before them cannot be described in words alone.

We are in awe of them. We are all one big team together, and nothing is lost on us as to how much the Sherpa guides do for the expedition and us generally. We are looking forward to returning to Everest Base Camp (EBC) to see them.Once we return to Everest Base Camp (EBC), we anticipate we will have a minimum of 1-2 rest days and on these days we will also be checking our gear and readying any other supplies that need to be taken up the mountain. We will also be watching the weather and looking for the weather window that works for our team (stable weather and a reduction in the jetstream winds up high) to start making our way up the mountain for our summit push. Our team is healthy, we are feeling strong, we are in good spirits and we all hope that the weather and conditions ahead are good to us. Most of all, we offer total respect to Chomolungma and trust that she will be good to us. Hello to all family and friends of the team.

We are thinking of you.

Regards,Chris

We made a small platform between our kitchen and our mess tent, which we named Cafe C2 and has the best view of Everest south face, Lhotse, Nuptse and western Cwm. After a day of rest and acclimatisation we went and made a quick acclimatisation trip to base of Lhotse face, which is roughly at 6700 meters. That night we were greeted with almost 12 inches of snow, but the morning was beautiful with clear blue sky and it was great day for us to enjoy Caf’ C2 all day on the sun.On the 28th we decided to go and sleep at camp 3, which is right on the middle of Lhotse face.

We were one of the only first three groups to do so this season. It was long and hard day but the condition on the face this year is really good with fresh snow making climbing lot more easier as we did not had to keep driving our front point on hard blue ice like last year. Everyone made it up to camp 3 in great time. Mingma, Mikma and Thsiring went back all the way down to base camp after helping us set up camp. 4 climbers and us 6 guides spent very windy and very happy night at camp 3. It is very impressive to see how everyone coped with sleeping at over 7000m. Nobody needed any medical assistance to sleep everyone enjoyed the great view and great sunset from camp 3.

We decided to leave next morning and come back down all the way to base camp in one single push. After windy morning descending Lhotse face, we had a good couple of hour at Camp 2 packing and having lunch. Descending through icefall in the evening with no one around was just great. We have had two days of quite relaxing days here at base camp and planning our next week or so. Will let you know what our plans will be for our rest period before the summit push.

Speak soon.

Sumit