April 23, 2007

"One method of getting loved ones to look more fondly on your climbing is to tell them that since you've started climbing you hardly do drugs anymore." — David Harris.

Dear lord do my socks smell, hmmm... smell is too delicate a word to describe the rank and foul nature of the odour eminating from my feet. I pray that in 2 days time I will be able to do some 'laundry' for humanities sake. I have learned that there are several rarely discussed skills that simplify a mountaineers life if they can be acquired: 1) using a squat toilet (more about
possessing strong upper leg muscles), 2) being able to bathe using a bowl, water and hanky, and 3) I thought there was a third skill but I forgot it, although possessing only short term memory when it comes to pain definently helps. Oh #3 just came to me, being able to cleanly use a pee bottle.
We made good progress early in the morning and could see the 'hill' behind which lay our destination Panch pokari. We took several little breaks along the way to bask in the sun
and enjoy our last full day in the Hunku. The afternoon was not so pleasant, a stiff wind picked up an it started to snow dropping visibility down to ~20 ft, this in itself would have been
ok but it started to appear that Kaji had lost his bearings and thus our progress slowed substantially. We were definently headed in the proper direction but whether we would be close enough to camp to spot it or imply pass right by it was a bit up in the air. Luckily we were headed into a dead end valley so the worst that could happen would be camping at
a virgin camp site. I think the whole episode was more bothersome for me as I didn't have a good idea of where we were going before hand, I knew geographically but without
major landmarks that appear on the map I was 'lost'. We did eventually find the proper camp site after an hour or so, and as iis usual the clouds rolled out shortly there after and we
started the process of establishing camp which was a bit more difficult then usual as we had to 'landscape' a bit.
In the early evening Kaji, Dindy and 1 other person went off to scout our route up through Ambulapcha La tomorrow. I could see three wee specks up high on the glacier, I knew this pass was to be technical, but I didn't know our route would be taking us climbing up the face of the glacier. Anyways tomorrow looks like it will be a challenging but entertaining day.
I offered and poured Kaji some more today, he and the porters got a real kick out of this and were having a really good laugh. When ever I do what they perceive as their chores they seem to find it very odd and funny, I guess most trekkers treat it like a master-servant relationship.