Finally we have some good news on the weather front and I will leave base camp tomorrow and aim to summit on the 25th.
It's been a strange few days at base camp, all the teams except for us and one other have been waiting at ABC for early weather windows which did not materialise. Consequently, there have still been no summits from the North although the CTMA team are heading to the summit today to complete the fixing of the ropes up to the summit. Conversely, there have been plenty of summits from the South (I have wondered many times if I should have gone that way and could now be relaxing in Kathmandu) although the weather on that side is now much worse and I understand that many teams have left the mountain.
The other Northside teams are aiming to summit on the 20th and 21st whereas we will wait. While it would have been easier to follow the other teams up to ABC I am pleased that we stuck to our guns and have stayed at BC where I think we will have eaten and rested much better than we would have at ABC. Hopefully, they can all summit on these days and leave us with a clear mountain on the 25th.
The only worry with our strategy is with acclimatisation, it is now two weeks since I climbed up to 7500m and normal thinking is that acclimatisation last around two weeks (although this is not an exact science). Personally, I will have spent two weeks at base camp (i.e. exactly the same amount of the time as last year) and walked up to around 5800m a couple of time so I expect it will be OK but won't know until I climb higher again.
The summit push itself will be five days of climbing, each consuming around 10,000 calories which, coupled with the appetite suppression at altitude making it very difficult to consume more than around 1500 calories a day, can be very debilitating. Especially when you also factor in the difficulties keeping hydrating.
In addition to dehydrated meals (which are not the best and very difficult to digest at the best of times), I will be carrying chocolate, peanuts, energy gels, beef jerky and energy powder. Hopefully these will be enough to keep me going but I will need to be very careful to make sure they don't freeze - particularly on summit day.
It's been a strange few days at base camp, all the teams except for us and one other have been waiting at ABC for early weather windows which did not materialise. Consequently, there have still been no summits from the North although the CTMA team are heading to the summit today to complete the fixing of the ropes up to the summit. Conversely, there have been plenty of summits from the South (I have wondered many times if I should have gone that way and could now be relaxing in Kathmandu) although the weather on that side is now much worse and I understand that many teams have left the mountain.
The other Northside teams are aiming to summit on the 20th and 21st whereas we will wait. While it would have been easier to follow the other teams up to ABC I am pleased that we stuck to our guns and have stayed at BC where I think we will have eaten and rested much better than we would have at ABC. Hopefully, they can all summit on these days and leave us with a clear mountain on the 25th.
The only worry with our strategy is with acclimatisation, it is now two weeks since I climbed up to 7500m and normal thinking is that acclimatisation last around two weeks (although this is not an exact science). Personally, I will have spent two weeks at base camp (i.e. exactly the same amount of the time as last year) and walked up to around 5800m a couple of time so I expect it will be OK but won't know until I climb higher again.
The summit push itself will be five days of climbing, each consuming around 10,000 calories which, coupled with the appetite suppression at altitude making it very difficult to consume more than around 1500 calories a day, can be very debilitating. Especially when you also factor in the difficulties keeping hydrating.
In addition to dehydrated meals (which are not the best and very difficult to digest at the best of times), I will be carrying chocolate, peanuts, energy gels, beef jerky and energy powder. Hopefully these will be enough to keep me going but I will need to be very careful to make sure they don't freeze - particularly on summit day.
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