New audio update from TA on Pumori.

This is the text of TA’s audio message:

Hi this is TA calling in from Pumori base camp.  I’m calling in my update a little later then usual because we had quite a day and I needed a little time to get rehydrated and a little recovery time so that I would sound half intelligible.

We woke to cloudy skies with a little bit of snow on the tent and some wind, and chiller temperatures then we’ve had.  We usually been awakened by a sun kiss on our tents to know its warm and lets us know its time to get up, but instead today we had to dress and prepare for our big days climb in the chilly weather.  Headed out around 7:30 to make our way up to camp 1, the first 150 metres or so of the route was free climbing and then we got on to the fixed lines.

I had hoped to avoid having a ‘turtle migration’, which is code for taking a dump, but unfortunately my body wouldn’t listen.  So I got off the fixed line and crawled into a serac, which was actually the warmest place of the entire day.  It’s a pretty completed thing to go to the bathroom with your harness on, you have to take parts of it off and unfortunately sometimes you get a little messy.  So it wasn’t the best start to my day but I got everything all cleaned up and got back on the fixed line at the end and continued up.  We have lots of little knots to pass with our safety carabineers and our jumars and up we go.

Found it pretty chilly on the hands today, my gloves just weren’t cutting it so every 5 or 10 steps I had to sort of pull my fingers in for the first part of the day.  Felt better when the wind dropped, and then I could move along at a pretty good pace.  I was pleased with the efficiency of my knot and anchor changes, and my overall climbing technique.  It was a pretty hard slog we all came back pretty darn pooped, dehydrated, underfed, all that kinda stuff.  We got back to advanced base camp around 2 or 2:30, powered in a little bit of water and then scooted down for about another hour over that wonderful rock palace scree slope.  Back here to base camp were we where greeted with hot drinks and some snacks.

I hadn’t had enough to drink during the day so I’m still nursing a bit of a dehydration headache.  I did manage to breath through my buff all day which was a big success.  I sometimes find them rather suffocating so I did have nice warm moist air going into my lungs most of the day.  Still coughing pretty good at times, I’m contemplating whether or not to treat the cough with antibiotics or to just keep on; it’s a bit of a borderline call.  Had a lovely dinner, had some visitors over from another expedition that is starting in 5 or 6 days, their members are still trekking in.

Temperatures are defiantly dropping here at base camp and by the end of dinner our mess tent is covered in frost and people are appreciating their big fluffy clothing.  Much of my big fluffy clothing is up at advanced base camp after the big carry the other day.  I have enough here at base camp to stay warm, it’s always nice to take a hot water bottle to bed and warm up the sleeping sack.

Today we figure that we’ve climbed to about 6100 or 6150 metres.  We might actually move camp one a little lower then where we actually climbed today, because what we got there is pretty narrow.  It’s about half the size of a commercial dinning room table.  It’s pretty hard to put four tents there so we will see.  Team two is heading up tomorrow, they are going to aim to go all the way to camp one and then come back down to advanced base camp to sleep.  Team one, of which I am a member, get a rest day tomorrow HORRAY! and if the Sherpa’s manage to get camp one in, the day after next we will try to go all the way from base camp to camp one and then make a day trip towards camp two.  So many heavy sloggy days ahead, hopefully we can find the energy, and the will, and the heart, and the strength, to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

That’s about it for today, a much more newsier update then if I called at the usual time, when I was having trouble putting a sentence together…lol..  So a big day here on our Pumori climb thanks for tuning in and we will talk to you tomorrow.

TA