Summit and beyond...

Alright... so it's been a few days since I last posted on here. We had a nice hike up from Dingboche, where we met up with Jagat and 5 more porters with our mountain gear and all the gear to set up and maintain basecamp. We then stayed a night in Chukung and continued on up to Imja Tse basecamp. We talked with quite a few people on their way down off Island peak and decided to get started plenty early the next morning for our climb. The people we talked to had not summitted because there had been a bottleneck up at the headwall, 600 vertical feet from the summit and they weren't able to make it past in time. So we decided to head out around midnight, rather than our planned 1am.

We packed up our bags, grabbed a quick supper and went to bed around 7:30pm planning to get up at 11pm to eat and get ready to head out by midnight. I had planned ahead and inserted my earplugs to help me get to sleep while there was still much activity going on in camp... well that only succeeded in helping me lay there in silence and listen to my own thoughts for the next few hours. I'm not sure if I was able to doze off for a few minutes here and there over the next 4 hours, but it didn't feel like it. When Jagat finally came over to the tent to wake us up I was stoked, FINALLY I could get up! We rose, geared up, ate and started off with Lal, our mountain guide, in the lead and two porters following along carrying the ropes, crampons, double walled boots, and our other glacier and ice gear.

The first three hours or so were hard on me, I don't particularly like hiking in the dark up mountains in the middle of the night. It's boring and seems like I'm not making any progress. After a while, 3 or 4 hours, we got above the fog/clouds in the valley and were able to see the stars! That helped my attitude a lot. It was absolutely stunning! To see the stars so brilliantly, and the huge mountains silhouetted against the shimmering fabric of the night sky was glorious. We hiked another hour or two before we reached the edge of the glacier just as the edge of the sky was beginning to lighten.

When we stopped hiking to gear up, change boots and don crampons for the glacier it was frigid! It was great to have down pants and a nice heavy down parka and gloves. When we were all ready and roped up we headed out onto the glacier as daylight spread across the sky. What an amazing glacier, bowls and ridges it was a smooth but rolling and tumbling mass. Much more exciting than the glaciers I've traversed in the northwest. We had to jump two crevasses and were overtaken at this point by another team that was out of control! I'm not sure why they were roped up at all. They all were holding loops of the slack between them and traveling as a mob. When they crossed the crevasses, I saw the rope stepped on with crampons at least a dozen times, no one even seemed to care that that was their lifeline they were puncturing! Well we made it up the glacier to the bottom of the headwall and the sun was full on, it was hot! All the snow and ice of the glacier acted as a giant oven! Whew!

The other team had left their fixed line on the headwall... but after seeing how they treated their other rope, we requested that Lal fix our rope for us rather than using the rope already set. (in the Himalayas it is quite common and acceptable to share fixed lines once set)

We made it slowly up the headwall (nearly 20,000ft makes all work harder). At the top of the headwall there was a small flat spot and then a ridgewalk 60 ft to the summit. At the top of the headwall on of our members got quite sick, after a quick dash to the summit I took over from Les and began down with our sick teammate. Rappelled down the headwall side by side until we reached the glacier, where we waited for the rest of the team to catch up. It was a long and slow process down from there, but we made it. Once off the glacier Les and I worked our way down, Les leading and me with a shortrope attached to our teammates harness. We would stop every 20 minutes for them to rest. One of our porters, Ram Shingh had headed down ahead of us with a gear bag, dropped off his load and ran back up the mountain to help us. He then carried our friend when the trail was smooth enough and helped me guide them when it was too rocky, just before we reached the flat, NP, Jagat and Chet also reached us as they had been alerted of our situation. Then NP and Ram Shingh took turns carrying our friend back to camp. Once in camp we let them rest for a few minutes while we decided whether to continue down to Chukung or not as it was now almost 6pm and would be getting dark soon. After 15 minutes rest we woke them and did a simple test to see how they were doing. They were able to walk a straight line heal-to-toe and were very oriented, just exhausted now so we decided to stay. The rest of us ate some food prepared for us and we all turned in. What a long day! 18 hours on the mountain and we were all beat!

Slept incredibly well, but for the first time since entering the mountains I didn't wake up once to pee... I had drank almost a liter and a half before bed but I'd let myself get a little dehydrated over the course of the climb. Woke up to a very cold morning, but nearly 12 hours of sleep had worked wonders and felt great!