Communication ... (Friday)

As you might have noticed and hard to imagine we were outside any cell phone range or internet cafes to keep you all updated. And not for lack of trying. Having carried up the iPad to the summit of Chhukhung Ri at 5550m. Had a good phone connection but no data to update the blog...

The view from the summit (...of Chhukhung Ri) was nothing but spectacular. Starting in the East with Island Peak with its black summit triangle with the massive Makalu in the background, turning South is the a massive wall of ice where RR Martin must have gotten the idea for the 'Wall' in Game of Thrones (we are oh by the way hurting on the inside that we are missing season 3 but i guess this is worth it....) followed by the north ridge of AmaDablam (on the right of the picture). Turning North is the Nuptse ridge leading up to the South face of Lhotse. One of the most stunning viewpoints on the planet.

Back down again and a relaxed evening around the stove. Tomorrow its around the mountain down to Dingboche und up to Dhugla.

A little vignette: Henry has a lot of fun about our reliance on/ calibration with the map and a stark example was upon coming down from chhukhung ri - since i had done a traverse and gone up something else after that traverse, according to The Map, i had also done Chhukhung itself...so we asked the sherpa "did i do chhukhung ri today?"- "yes" - "did i do chhukhung itself?" -"yes"- "did i do both?"- "no.". Hm.

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That was Jan's day. Kimchen here got a bad bad headache halfway up that mountain and decided to stay put with Henry. We hung out there for an hour (our stunning view was Jan going up up up with Hermanta (who has been our guardian angel since Lukla and has been absolutely fantastic)) and then headed back down to the lodge...where I realised that Jan had the only key to our room. So i sat. With tea and down jacket. Remarkably quite happy to chill and snooze and hope that the next day would be better. Jan got back a couple of hours later.... Exhausted but delighted and really really comfortable with the altitude so the stars remain perfectly aligned for our little mountain rat.