April 24, 2007

"Why ? Why, why, why do I do this ???" — Chuck Pratt.

Long day today, didn't set up camp until 3pm and we started at 8am. Today we crossed Ambulapcha La and it is easy to see why attempting a crossing after heavy snow would
be dangerous. After scrambling up perhaps 300ft of scree slopes we started climbing up fixed ropes up the face of the glacier. I enjoyed this stage of the climb quite alot, especially seeing
the all the different layers of ice each representing a year of ice and the various blue and greenish tints of the ice. After a couple of pitches we switched to mixed climbing followed by
a long gradual snow slope to the top of the pass. Most of the mixed climbing was on what I think was yellow marble much like that which makes up the imfamous yellow band on Everest.
The snow slope though not of incrediblly steep grade was a bit hairy as my ascender iced up and stopped catching meaning any fall would have been quite long as few anchors had been fixed. The top of the pass didn't feel like a typial pass, it felt more like we were simply crossing over a ridge. The way down from the pass was less omfortable, although the technical part was only 200-300 ft at most. The most difficult and intimidating part was a short rappel which was complicated by the fact I was still wearing crampons and the first half of the rappel was rock. Once I got the first 3 or 4 foot holds figured out things got easier. As stated earlier today was a long day, this was mostly due to the fact that like on Zatrawa La I was forced to do a lot of waiting (at least 3 hours this time) as Kaji had to retrieve all of the fixed lines once all the porters and trekkers had descended from the pass. It seems that Kaji always takes on more than his fair share of the work load, hopefully the other teams compensate him. I got my first glimpse of Island peak today although I was unaware of it at the time. We travelled along side lateral moraines standing a good 150ft tall, very impressive. This was where the Lhotse, Lhotse Shar, Imja, and Ambulapcha glacirs merge to form a super glacier. You can see Island peak from our campsite and hopefully tomorrow I will spy Ama Dablam. 2 days hence I should be at Island high camp preparing for an alpine start for the summit. We are foregoing basecamp as it is usually crowded unattractive and in the case of heavy snow fall prone to avalanches. Tomorrow will be a much needed rest day.