Preparation done now for the final push..

May 2nd to 5th

We headed up for the final part of the preparation to touch Camp 3 last Thursday with the now familiar 3:30 wake-up call to be ready to head into the icefall at 4:30. While its cold and dark it's almost become a familiar path over the past weeks. Despite the perceived constant effort to the previous climbs we made it ip to Camp 1 just under 4 hours and after a short break continued on to Camp 2. With the extra weight it was a struggle to keep the pace to surmount the total 1100m up from Base Camp all the way to Camp 2 so a rest day was needed thereafter.

The first night up at 6400m was incredibly windy and the tent walls were flapping loudly. Lay awake considering if tents can fly away while being inside. Have seen empty tents take to the skies on Aconcagua. Luckily the winds calmed down the next day for some recovery time before we head up higher on Saturday.

The next stage was somewhat daunting to head up higher than i have every been before. We first continued the familiar path to the foot of the Lhotse face but after a short break prepared to continue on. The Lhotse face rises more than a 1000 meters from 6800m to the South Col at 8000m. Its about a 45 degree angle and rather than being a smooth snow slope its actually an uneven surface consisting more of pure ice than snow. There are two fixed lines on which one jumars (a device that slides upwards on the rope but locks downwards) one step at a time. At this angle the effort for each step required three deep breadths of recovery. After two hours we reached our destination of a small ledge carved into the snow at 7100m. Once stationary, felt good and admired the incredible view down the Western Cwm all the way to Camp 1 (see photo). The path down was incredibly quick with one hour versus the four in total up. One clips into the rope and then 'arm-wraps' the fixed line to create enough friction to slow ones descent.

In the evening our debates centred around the weather outlook. We had hoped to stay up at Camp 2 to go directly for the summit but unfortunately the forecast calls for very highwinds as the jetstream moves down over the next few days so we decided to head down on a Sunday to wait for the right weather window. Most of the teams have taken down all of their tents in Camp 3 and 2 as Henry rightly remarks it only takes minutes to take down but hours to search for them on the Nuptse Wall....

Its now a Monday and i walked down to Gorak Shep again for some good internet connectivity and for some phone calls without freezing ones hands off. Everyone is watching the weather. Its gotten a lot colder today and the wind has picked up. Hoping its a temporary spike and that we can head up again on Wednesday. Technically the first possible summit day is now the 12th considering that we need to be in position at the South Col but until them the summit needs to fixed with ropes (they need to good summit days for themselves), our supplies need to be at the Col (about a third is already up), and the weather needs to good (winds below 30 knots).

So that s it for today. Hopefully i can get some further messages down so that Kim can update the blog. Fingers crossed for the final push to the summit.