April 19, 2007

"Because it is there." — George Mallory

Its snowy and windy so everyone is staying in their tents, I'm getting a bit of cabin fever despite the supposedly soothing bright yellow colours of my tent. To combat my fever I faced the storm and built an Inukshuk, my biggest yet. He's on a ledge over looking camp. As a sign of solidarity to my inukshuk I stayed out side sitting next to it for a half hour before retiring. We are now at Mera base camp ~5315m. I'm quite glad as I had originally thought we'd be losing altitude at this camp relative to Khare which didn't appeal to me in the least. I'm still feeling strong (well as strong asa one can feel with only 50% O2) and I'm quite certain that we'll make the summit if the weather permits. I'm a little concerned about Kaji today and yesterday, but especially today, he seems to have slowed down quite considerably and takes many stops (more than necessary). I think he may have come down with something but won't tell me,
hopefully if this is the case it will clear up quickly. I've come down with a strange affliction myself, it seems every morning and occassionally in the afternoon my nipples hurt like hell, I think I shall name this affliction HANS (high altitude nipple soreness).
This is quite strange it is snowing and yet there is thunder, I was under the impression that thunder was a warm weather phenomenon.
We finally put our crampons to use today as we travelled across Mera glacier, it was great to kick those metal teeth into some ice. The glacier is our highway to the top, a long way
to the top though as it seems to be a rather gentle incline until just below the summit.
It has gotten bloody cold outside mostly due to the biting wind. I ventured outside for another 20 min or so to fight of boredom and with the exception of my hands was as warm as a clam in clam chowder.
Who ever thought it would be a good idea to have a spare water bottle for peeing in was a genius, Nobel material if you ask me. The reason being that while windchill doesn't exist when
your wearing gore-tex, you can't pee through gore-tex (or at least hygenically and easily).