Sorry for the late post
Today we went from camp 2 (6500m) all the way back down to base camp.
We had breakfast at 5am and left soon after. It was very cold as the sun hadn’t hit so we wore a lot of layers and very heavy gloves with chemical hand warmers.
After about 1 hour we hit camp 1 where we had some tea to warm up, but since we wanted to hit the icefall early (when it’s more frozen), we didn’t stop for long. We climbed into the icefall, that had actually changed a bit since last time as some ice had collapsed, forcing the route to change. The down climbing was fine – it just keeps getting hotter so we had to keep adjusting our layers. It took us about 4 hours to go down from camp 2 to base camp. By the end I was pretty stuffed. From that day’s climb, but also from having spent 6 days, just living above 6000m where my body works much harder just to survive, let alone climb.
We got down, I had a “shower” (bucket of hot water) and some coke. I also tried to eat as much as I could, which wasn’t much.
• Thank you for all of the concern – I did manage to brush my hair out!!! I was also stressed because my amazing friend Gaby (one of my temporary Everest mums) was still up on the mountain so she couldn’t help me 😭 but I did it myself 💪
Today had a pretty big change of plans.
So after lunch, a few people took helicopters down to Kathmandu, to rest before our summit push. Dad liked this idea so we also took a helicopter down to Lukla (the next day we flew to Kathmandu). Since our rotation is finished, and we were a tiny bit sick, it is best for our bodies to recover and regain strength at a lower altitude. Many climbers do this, and in Lukla we met up with my friend Julia where we had burgers. As soon as I descended to high oxygen levels, I got EXTREMELY HUNGRY so I ate A LOT.
