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  Everest 2006: Fi and Paul: Safety thought the icefall


Location: Camp 1
Altitude: 6050m
Local Time: 5pm, 5th May
Weather: Fine at first, then snowy in afternoon

Hi everyone, it's Fiona here,

We've now moved up to Camp 1 for our second acclimatisation rotation. It's a good feeling to be above the icefall. No matter how many times we end up going through it, I don't think I'll ever get used to it.

The Trip Up
We left base camp this morning at around 5:30am - so that we could be through the icefall before the heat of the day hit. It seemed to be just as hard as last time - lots of ups and downs, making it hard to find a rhythm. However, we were pleased to find that we are moving faster now - having reduced our time from around 6 hours to 4.5 hours (although Paul was under the weather last time). This is still not considered especially fast, but is at least about average.

On the way up, my hands started getting very cold - and because we were in a position that did not seem a good place to stop and pull out warmer gloves (given there were big ice structures towering above us), and also because I could see that the sun was going to hit us soon, I foolishly left it until I had dangerously cold hands. Fortunately we found a rest spot and Mingma and Dasona helped me warm them up. Luckily no damage done, but it sure was a good lesson.

Camp 1
We arrived at C1 at around 10am - giving us plenty of time to relax and recover from the climb up. Ironically, with the sun shining on the tents, it gets unbelievably hot - in fact the thermometer on our watches read 45C! We were constantly trying to adjust the tent ventilation to get a breeze blowing through, and then piling snow into a bandana to cool ourselves down. Around mid-afternoon, the clouds came in and the temperature plumetted - leaving us scrambling to close up the tent and put layers of clothes on. We have left our good sleeping bags up at C2 so will be using IMG's tonight - along with a lot of clothes I imagine. At the moment I have 3 sets of thermals on and a down vest and it's only 4pm. It's expect it to be around -12C here tonight - and that's inside the tent!

After we send this off, we'll be heading over to the cooking tent where we'll cook up one of those instant pasta meals and possibly some 2 minute noodles for dinner. Will have to collect some snow for melting water first so we're hoping the weather outside eases off a little. As we're the only ones at C1 at the moment, there'll be plenty of room for cooking.

C1 has Moved
Since we were here last time, our Sherpas have moved the location of this camp. Last time there had recently been a lot of new snowfall and everyone staying at C1 had witnessed several reasonably close avalanches coming off the West shoulder. With this feedback, IMG arranged for the camp to be moved a little further across the valley towards Nuptse. It's not really clear cut whether it's safer or not as there could just as easily by avalanches off Nuptse but most people (including our Sherpas) are happier about its new position.

Mary's Trek
We've heard from Mary that today she hiked to Dugla and is staying there tonight. Yesterday, while on a rest day at Dingboche, she hiked over to Pheriche and attended the daily lecture on altitude sickness put on by the Himalayan Rescue Association. As that altitude (around 4000m) is often where people start having trouble acclimatising, they strongly encourage trekkers to break up their journey and stop overnight at Dugla rather than going straight to Lobuche. This makes it a pretty short day, but there is no hurry for Mary to get here - especially now that we are up the hill again for a few days. We'd much rather her arrive feeling well.

Well, that's all for now. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we plan to head up to C2.

Cheers to all, Fi.

Updates

 

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