May 17, 1:45 am, Base Camp
After a few hours of rest, no sleep of course… we had some breakfast at 2 am, then loaded up our packs and headed out the “door”, up the hill towards crampon point, about a good half hour from camp. Getting out this early and into the cold, I usually need some time to “get in the mood”… or rather to get my body to accept the miserable situation and to function properly. When we arrived at crampon point I realized that I had left my filled water bottle at in the dining tent, and had only my second (empty one) in my pack. For a moment I was contemplating getting by without it, but then realized that, just in case we were really going up higher, I would be without it for the next couple of days…, not a good idea. When I mentioned it to Pasang, he just told me to stay put, then went back by himself and picked up my water bottle, of course much faster than I could have done it... While I was waiting at the bottom of the icefall – and getting colder by the minute - I kept thinking on what may be ahead in those next couple of days. I was definitely ready to just get this over with, one way or the other…
The climb through the icefall went without incident. Again the route had changed due to some recent collapses; the icefall was becoming less stable now with the approaching summer. About 4 ½ hrs later we walked into camp, this time we did not continue on to camp 2, but rather stayed in camp 1 for the remainder of the day.
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