30-03-2012 – Rest Day / Packing

Altitude: 1300m

Atmospheric Pressure: 885mbar

Temperature: 28DegC

A little jet lagged, I was awake from 4am, on and off.

The mission for this morning is to meet up with Russell to go to his office and try to find my missing kit.

After a big breakfast with fruit salad and croissant, we’re on our way to his office by 9:30. It’s busy time and the traffic is crazy, I’m not usually a nervous passenger, but I must have made “involuntary” sounds more than a couple of times. I still can’t get used to this J!

When we finally get to the office, it looks like any buildings in Kathmandu, very weathered and the rusty gates at the front just about hang together.

After unloading the car, we start looking for my stuff. The kit is spread around in different rooms and everything is neatly stacked. We soon realize that my kit is not there!! I knew something was gonna go wrong! Russell think it might have got left in Samagaon as we rushed down from Manaslu, ARRRRRGH!! This was supposed to be the “easy” bit!!

Luckily, he has some spare boots about my size and a spare pair of down gloves. I’m just short of a balaclava, but I made him promised to get us a nice weather window for summit day so I won’t need one!

I never thought this would trouble me too much, but apart from the disappointment of having spend some money and time choosing the right kit and not being able to use it, I also start to think about the impact that this could have on my summit day, thinking about crampons not fitting properly and blisters in those new boots, not ideal.

We get on our way back to the hotel to get packing, and as we arrive, we bump into Henry, the mentor looking after the walking with the wounded (WWTW) soldiers. I explain the situation and he remembers packing “extra” kit in their bag yesterday and sending it back to the office.

Russ makes a quick phone call to the office and get the kit bags back to the hotel for a quick check.

They arrive 1 hour later and deep joy, all my kit is in there!!! Halleluiah!!

Now, I just need to get my kit checked by a guide, to ensure everything is there, that it fits and that it will work.

Then, it gets split in 3 bags:

-         Base Camp bag (30kg) which I won’t see for 3 weeks

-         Trekking bag (15kg) which I’ll get access to every night at the lodges

-         and a day bag (5kg) for water and day clothes

I’m also leaving my “civies” clothes here, I’m not sure a denim jacket would be very “trendy” at Base Camp nor my swimming trunks!!

Then SWIMMING POOL for the rest of the afternoon. There’s rumor that a first group might need to be off by 5am tomorrow to catch the helis ……… do I feel lucky?

We’ll find out in the debrief at 6pm.