Today was one hell of a day! We left BC at 5 o'clock this morning, a still, clear day(great for summitting!). I tried to go deliberately slowly as my pack was somehow too heavy again, as I was trying to take everything needed for a summit bid in one go (because you never quite know what might unfold).
I mostly went throughthe icefall with Nadir, Ray and Greg moving way ahead in the end. It wasn't too busy in there today, no real queuing, and we reached the top in four and three quarter hours, just as the boiling sun hit us. After that, I was baked, and very slow! We reached camp one(now just one sad tent) in six and a half hours, a bit poor....I blamed the bag..!
After a brief rest the weather changed for the worse with fairly persistent snow and cloud. At least we avoided the heat though. So off we set again, onwards and upwards, through the cold snow...I seemed painfully slow to camp two, 3 hours in the end, and good old Kenton won some "Brownie points" by coming down a few hundred yards from the tents to meet me and take my rucsac from me. Good man.

Boy I was tired, almost as if I'd not been up here earlier. Well it was 12 days ago, and acclimatisation changes wear off pretty quickly. Thank you China.We are now at 6400m, having started at 5340m.
I was revived speedily with the best bowl of soup we've had out here, and I've had a nice chat with my tent mate Mark, an Aussie. We don't mix much at BC, due to the group size. Him and his mates went up the Lhotse face today, but were repelled before reaching camp three itself by falling rocks(and drink bottles!) . Apparently the actual climbing on the lower face wasn't too difficult, just very busy!.

We will rest tomorrow, and maybe try the face the next day...there is snow forecast after that, unfortunately, so we may be straight back down again, which is bit soul destroying.
I'm told most of the others were also pretty shattered on arrival here over the last few days, so some consolation there then.

Messages:;

As we're up here, and batteries are precious(and cold), I'm going to be brief!
There were lots of messages for me yesterday, which was nice, they
really mean a lot to me(and Ray and Greg too), so basically thanks to all of you! Good luck to Man U for this afternoon, I think they deserve the title really! I can't find any live footie on world service tonight, which is a blow as I carried the radio up here especially.
I know Greg will be trying to ring Heather tomorrow, as it's her birthday on tuesday, and he's worried because we'll be up the mountain again on the actual day.