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  Everest 2006: Fi and Paul: Getting ready to go to Camp 3


Location: Camp 2
Altitude: 6425m
Local Time: 5pm, 7th May
Weather: Fine for most of the day, 5C

Hi everyone, it's Fiona here,

We've been having a lazy day here at Camp 2 - getting ready for our climb up to Camp 3 tomorrow.

Preparations for C3
Camp 3 is where the altitude and weather can get particularly serious so it will be the first time we'll be wearing our down suits. However, if the weather is fine, we could potentially roast in these on the way up but we figure it's better to be too hot than too cold (and it would be virtually impossible to change halfway up the Lhotse face). We'll also be using hand warmers in the morning and Paul will be using toe warmers. We've packed a spare pair of overmitts as we've heard that a guy from another team accidentally dropped one of his mittens on the way up to C3 and suffered some serious frostbite.

At C3 we cook for ourselves so we've packed so instant dinners and some snacks which we hope we'll be able to stomach. We've also got a couple of bars and plenty of Gu's for the trip up. We expect it to take around 7 hours - a fairly long day at altitude.

Acclimatisation Rotations
You might wonder why we're going up and down so much, rather than going straight up to the summit. The theory goes that time spent up high is necessary for the body to acclimatise (build more red blood cells and trigger a variety of other processes). However, at these altitudes, the body also deteriorates (loses muscle mass, is very susceptible to illnesses, etc), and so there is a very fine balance between acclimatisation and deterioration. On Everest, doing rotations going increasingly higher seems to work best. Most people work up to spending one night at C3 and then they are considered ready for a summit bid - providing there is not too much of a wait for good weather.

Dennis is planning to make the trip up to C3 with us tomorrow.

That's all for now,
Fiona

Updates

 

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