Camp 3/Lhotse Face

May 20, 5 am, Camp 3/Lhotse Face

A cold and very uncomfortable night had finally passed, there is not much sleep at this altitude.  Nevertheless I felt somewhat recovered and ready to push on the South Col.  Adrenalin was running high now, it was clear that from here on out there would be no second attempt in case we had to turn back.

In addition, we are now using oxygen for the climb up to the South Col which is located at an altitude of about 26,000 ft.  It was the first time for me to use supplemental oxygen and I was curious on what difference it would really make.  In general, we climb with one oxygen tank (weight about 18 lbs) that holds oxygen at 3,000 psi pressure.  While climbing, we use a flow rate of 3 L/min, thus one cylinder provides about 10 hrs of oxygen at this rate.  Right after getting back onto the face – we still had to climb the upper third of the Lhotse face before getting on the traverse to the Yellow Band – I was completely out of breath, even more than the day before.  I first thought that I may not had recovered enough, so I continued to struggle through this for almost an hour, I finally started pulling the oxygen mask off to be able to catch my breath.  From behind, Pasang must have noticed that I kept fighting just to take another step upwards, constantly gasping for air.  I continued fighting my way up towards the Yellow Band for about another hour, until we found a relatively safe spot to stop for few minutes.  As it turned out, I had a frozen regulator and hadn’t gotten any oxygen at all since we left camp.  Luckily we got it working again after removing some ice from the regulator cap, and started back up.  Although the difference was noticeable, it is only a small change overall, just enough to keep moving at a slow, but constant pace.  Getting through the Yellow Band and up the Geneva Spur was just as much work as the day before on the Lhotse Face, and around 10:30 am, about 5 hrs after leaving camp 3, we finally got to the South Col.  The weather was still clear, but the wind increased ever so slightly over the next few hours.  When I checked my oxygen supply, it turned out that I had still 2,100 lb pressure on the tank, it should have been about 1,500 lb or less if the system would have functioned properly.  

Across the Col, the Triangular Face and the upper slopes of Mt. Everest were coming in and out of the clouds, the view was intimidating.   Exhausted, but also quite excited to have made it to the mysterious South Col – and the 8,000 m mark – I tried to get some rest, hopefully the winds would die down and we would get a shot at the summit later tonight.