Altitude: 6500m 6750m
Atmospheric Pressure: 480mbar
Trek: 5.6kms / 3Hrs
For the whole night, the wind was back, even worst than
before it seems. At breakfast, everybody was talking about how surprising it
was that the tents didn’t fly off.
I slept well, my throat is a little sore, but I’m taking
Strepsil to see if that helps.
As were not going up to Camp 3 in this rotation, the team of
guides are keen to keep us moving, so today again, we’re going up to the bottom
of the Lhotsee face.
I like the advice of Harry, one of the guides, there’s no
point saving energy to climb the Lhotsee face, so might as well push hard in
those short walks, in an attempt to stimulate the body to working at this
altitude. As long as we still have enough energy to come down through the ice
fall…….quick in a couple of days.
This should be in semi daylight, so we’ll see the whole
monstrosity of the Khumbu Icefall. Jaco is already stressing abut going back
through it and it’s affecting his sleep.
There’s lots of politics around going up to Camp 3, new
routes, how safe the ice fall is to cross again, and Sergey seems to be thinking
about all this quite a bit, so I leave him to do that. I’m focusing on looking
after myself and staying healthy.
So in the morning, the guides wanted most of us (the healthy
ones), to go up to the bottom of the Lhotsee face again. It was nice to get
moving although the freezing wind made it that we had to wear our down suit.
We got back down for lunch without problems.
After lunch, giving enough tie for digestion, I decided to
go back up to the same point, hoping to trigger my body into more acclimatization.
It was about 3:30pm,
and very few people were out, on the flat, or on the Lhotsee face. Most people
prefer to move early in the morning to avoid the most active time of the day in
the afternoon, when the ice melts under the sun.
I over took a first group of climbers who must have been
acclimatizing, as we had done a few days back. The guide leading them was
setting a very easy pace, to look after their head probably.
As I carried on up, I crossed path with a rescue party
coming down with a sherpa on oxygen, there were 6 people in total.
I pushed on to the bottom of the face, then turned around
and made it back down in 18mins (59mins up).
Once back in camp, it turns out one of the injured soldiers
from our group, who is a doctor, is being involved into trying to diagnose the
state of health of this injured sherpa from another team.
As all of us feared, he was hit by a stone while on the
fixed rope above Camp 3 at 12:30
today. The stone hit him on the left hand side of his jaw, fracturing it. He then
fell down (the Lhotsee face is very steep) and hurt the back of his head
(braking his helmet).
After being unconscious for 45mins, his colleagues sherpa
manage to get him down the face, into camp 2 by 4pm,
an awesome achievement, considering the difficulty of the terrain.
By the time our “Doc” got involve, the sherpa had lost all
motion on his right side, sign of brain damage, the only possible action is to
fly him out of here, to Kathmandu hospital as soon as
possible.
The next problem is that the company employing this sherpa
is only insured for $5000, and getting the helicopter up to Camp 2 would cost
$15000.
Luckily, the rescue is organized (by Himex) before the
financial aspect is resolved, allowing the helicopter to land at Camp 2 one
hour after the sherpa arrived.
I must admit that, as a climber, it is very reassuring to
know that rescue can be arranged so quickly, even for this altitude. Woody, one
of the guides with many Everest summits under his belt, most from the North
side highlights that because of the political climate on the North side, there
is no helicopter rescue available, in any case of emergency, the individual
needs to be brought down to base camp then driven down to a hospital!!!
After dinner, the 1st group comes around to our
dinning tent to say goodbye. They’re off at 5am
to return to base camp.
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