I don’t have any photographs of the descent from ABC to Base Camp. The reason for this is simple: I was fucked. I ended up in the last group with Jess Cheeseman, Tamara Taylor and Carrie Gibson. I don’t think any of us was in a good way and our pace was incredibly slow from the very start of the day.
The distance down was some twenty miles, without a stopover at Intermediate Camp, all in one go which on any normal day would take about six hours. It took considerably longer than that.
This next bit was a blur and involved walking slowly over rocks.
About halfway down I started seeing animals in the shadows. Dogs hiding behind rocks and other, unidentified, animals flitting in and out of my peripheral vision. It became a fairly surreal argument between the rational part of my brain, that knew they weren’t really there, and the inner idiot that wanted to go and say hello to them.
This bit was a surreal, exhausting and tedious blur – a bit like if David Lynch and Terry Gilliam had a love child who made musical intermissions for documentaries about mathematical theory.
It was getting dark now which made things more problematic although on the plus side the shadow animals finally left me alone.
After what seemed like an age we saw lights ahead of us and were delighted to meet a group who had walked back up from Base Camp to welcome us and lead us back in.
I don’t know how many there were in the group that came out to meet us but Shippers, Knobber and Ollie were certainly present because one of them had brought me a can of coke which is still to this day the finest beverage I have ever consumed.
By this point I was really quite far gone. For some reason I became more than a little paranoid and I began to suspect that the group that had met us were Chinese agents who had captured us but eventually settled on the idea that actually they were Alien imposters who were taking us to their “Mothership”. Worst of all I then spent the rest of the journey planning escapes before dismissing them as unrealistic due to the fact I was too tired to even consider running anywhere.
The last insane idea to run through my head before we reached the safety of Base Camp was that everyone else were cannibals who had caught us for food. I dismissed this instantly as there no way even Shippers would be able to eat all of me.
I didn’t realise at the time but obviously the “friends and families” group was being updated with who had returned to BC and Buffy had been more than a little apprehensive given my name was one of only a few not accounted for.
Lastly I am internally grateful to Viv Worrall who, having remained at Base Camp, had set us all up with beds in tents so we could quite literally crash straight to sleep.
All in all a pretty epic day and an insight on how fatigue affects the human brain.
I am still not convinced we came down the right way.
Deano's World 