The next day was a scheduled rest day, since we were supposed to advance to camp three located in the upper part of the Lhotse face. This is considered a crucial part for the preparation for the actual summit climb. We are climbing to an elevation of more than 24,000 ft up the steep Lhotse face, spending the night there, and returning back down to camp two next morning. Everything looked fine in the afternoon, and I was preparing for what could easily be one of my hardest climbs ever.
As is happens here rather often, Mt. Everest did have some other plans for that night… Later in the evening, and out of nowhere, the winds suddenly picked up and got stronger with every passing minute. At the time, I had settled in for the night in camp 2, preparing for our planned departure at 3 am. By midnight the winds outside had increased to a ferocious storm with hurricane force, and the “luxury” of having a 3-person tent for myself for the night now turned into a potentially serious situation. After the winds collapsed the tent twice on top of me, it was time to prepare for the worst. Over the next 1 ½ hrs, using every short break in the wind, I slowly got dressed in over boots, down suit, face mask, helmet with head lamp, and heavy gloves in order to be prepared for some sudden exposure to the ferocious elements at the current 21,000 ft elevation of camp 2. The inside of my tent looked like a war zone, and things were flying in all directions while I was trying to hold the tent up with my back. Although I felt well prepared at the time, things got more sketchy every passing hour. I finally grabbed my rope knife in order to be ready to cut through the tent fabric if necessary.
Suddenly, around 3:30 am Pasang’s face showed up at the tent entrance: “We are not going up today! I have climbing rope, will tie the tent to large boulders…”. Over the next 20 mins or so he indeed managed to tie the tent back to the ground, removing some of the worst danger of being blown off the ground. Not only did he secure my own tent, together with some of the other sherpas he cleverly ran a web of rope across some other tents, including the cooking and the dining tent.
It turned out next day, that this had greatly minimized the damage to our (the IMG) camp, while other parties had suffered extensive damage to tents and equipment. Needless to say this was a rather exciting night, and the next day was spent with damage assessment and badly needed rest…
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