Well the day started right at midnight. I put my climbing socks on (I slept in my climbing clothes), organised some charging and braided my hair. At 12:20 I was about to put my boots on and head out for breakfast with my pack, crampons, harness and helmet, when mum showed me a new weather forecast that predicted strong jet stream winds for the next few days. We usually don’t really consider the weather for the climbing days before the summit day, but it was looking bad for the day I was hoping to summit.
Mum, Dad and I talked for a bit and we decided that I should go when the forecasts line up more clearly for a good day, not one that I can maybe uncomfortably push through. A good window will come, it always does.
We still got up to meet up with Kristen who was headed up. She is climbing a different mountain, and needed to go up on this day. I felt so sick to my stomach, not knowing if I had made the right decision to not go. It’s still early on in the season, with plenty of time left. We said goodbye and crawled back to our tents at about 1:45am.
I couldn’t sleep much after that, so woke up at 8am very tired. I had breakfast with the rest of our team, and then went straight back to bed.
That was pretty short lived as a Sherpa (I had climbed a few mountains with him, and knew him) came into my tent, woke me up and told me to come get some food. Usually, there is a big food tent and 1 by 1 each client goes in with their Sherpa to pick out the dehydrated meals and snacks they want for their summit push. However this time they had laid out a huge tarp and put all of the food on it. There was probably about 25 members and a lot of Sherpas who all had shopping bags to fill up with food. It felt like a crazy bazaar where everything is free.
I brought a lot of food from home, like dehydrated meals for dinner, bars, and chocolate. But I still grabbed lots of snacks like jellies and snickers bars. We also needed to get teas and dehydrated porridge to have at camp 3 and 4. At camp 2 there is already food (it’s not the best haha) so this is mainly for higher up.
I will make sure that most of my nutrition comes from high carb gels and not just chocolate and sugar.
Anyways after that very very chaotic 30 minutes, I went back to sleep. I was soooo tired!
Then I woke up for lunch, and we had burgers!!! Everyone was so happy! I am now losing my appetite a bit so it’s nice to have food that I enjoy.
I went up to the coffee tent with Mum and I did a lot of schoolwork. In my breaks we would check the weather. Literally all of our conversations are about weather!
I continued working until dinner time at 6:30 (and when I got too cold without my down jacket!). We ate and said goodbye to our friends who were leaving for their push. (I’m still confident about my decision!)
I went to bed, finished my show of The False Prophet, and went to sleep! This is my last full night in base camp as we are headed up tomorrow night (tonight as you’re reading this).
