Up to Camp 1 but ...

April 22

... The wrong one. It continued to snow heavily overnight so Everest's Camp 1 was out of the questions. 10 Sherpas got stuck at Camp 2 and it took them nine hours to get back to Base Camp breaking trail through thigh high new snow. The snow now needs to consolidate and a trail put back in for us to head up.

Instead we decided to head up the other side of the valley to Camp 1 of Pumori. Half way back from Base Camp to Gorak Shep and then upwards. Not really a trail but more balancing from boulder to boulder with increasing steepness until we reached the magical 5700m which we have now touched three times and hope to push past soon. After lingering for a bit and checking emails (the camp has line of sight of the mobile tower in Gorak Shep) we headed back down for the afternoon in camp.

Today the final participants arrived Bill Krauss and Hermant. Bill has climbed Everest a lot and was last up in 2007 with 20kg of camera gear to take 360 degree high resolution images for the upcoming film on Mallory (believe its called Into The Silence). He apprently raced up to the summit to make sure that no other climbers made their way into the image. Hermant is an Indian entrepreneur who had already tried Everest last year.

Tomorrow is Puja day the Buddist blessing of the team and gear after which the sherps are comfortable to sleep on the mountain. Hopefully after that the weather will also allow us to move up one camp.