We left Intermediate Camp to walk the last leg of our upward journey to Advanced Base Camp (ABC) which is situated at a, literally, breathtaking altitude of 6500m.
We made our way up the glacier over a collection of rock and ice. It was clear and sunny where we were but you could see the snow being blown off the peaks above us in huge clouds of spindrift. We were told that the weather was so bad above the North Col that there was nobody higher than Advanced Base Camp on the North side at that point.
It took longer than I expected to reach ABC which is possibly down to being told numerous times that we were thirty minutes out when we were still hours away. I remember walking in just my thermal top for most of the trek and then the temperature rapidly dropping as the sun went down. As I tend to stay warm when I’m moving regardless of what I’m wearing I only noticed when I spotted my hands had a bluish tinge and my fingers had cramped around the handles of my walking poles. Putting gloves on is surprisingly difficult when you don’t have much movement in your fingers!
The cold air started to aggravate my chest infection causing me to cough more and more. On top of that I had left my thermal top open and had badly burnt a triangle of skin on the top of my chest which had blistered and was starting to smell worse than the rest of me.
I think we were all struggling to some extent and I genuinely believe if the bad weather above us had blown in at that point the whole project would quite probably have been called off.
We had all finally limped into ABC at about 5pm exhausted and cold but quietly triumphant. We were up and all we had left to do was the small matter of setting up a rugby pitch and playing a game of rugby.
I was popping antibiotics, steroids, anti nausea (for the steroids) and tramadol for the chest infection, pain and sunburn at this point just to keep going and was incredibly lucky not to have to deal with any altitude sickness like many of the others were.
I spent the first night at ABC sharing a tent with Shane Williams. I remember trying to sleep in a sleeping bag that seemed to have shrunk on the way up whilst continually coughing and having to piss every hour or so. The only benefit of having to piss so often into a plastic bottle jar was that I could then use it as a hot water bottle. My tent mate was not having much fun either, in addition to me keeping him awake with my spluttering he’d manage to get a case of the shits which meant he was running to and from the toilet tent all night. There was a moment, at around 3am, with ice falling off the inside of the tent like snow and our breath freezing on our beards that we quietly agreed there was not a more miserable tent anywhere else on earth.
Trivia
- ABC was the camp with my favourite Trip Adviser toilet review by Rob Callaway
- It is possible to snore whilst still awake at 6500m
- You don’t care if you dribble while pissing into a bottle in your sleeping bag when it is -16 degrees outside
- The best piece of kit I took with me was a fleece head over (which was not made by RAB and was not on the extensive kit list of shit I didn’t need that was given to us by the guiding company…..)
Deano's World 