Rest Day and Technical Training

 

September 11

Today is a welcome rest day where the focus is on eating, drinking, and making red blood cells.  We’re following the tried-and-true method of climbing high and sleeping low.  The first day after a rotation usually includes a shower and some laundry which really improves one’s attitude.  Add in a few meals, some reading, watching something downloaded at home, a little blog writing and that’s a full day. 

Above is a view of our base camp.  Most climber’s tents are yellow and grey on the left and our two are past the three white ones in the foreground.  The three white ones in the foreground are for climbers with money to burn.  The five tall shower and latrine tents are to the right of the three white ones.  The two biggest domes are common areas for eating and socializing and the long double yellow tent between them is for food storage and cooking.  Each climber has their own tent so Kriss and I have designated one of ours for sleeping and one for gear.  It’s a great system for staying organized. 

The weather has been mostly rainy on and off.  This is really a surprise to me considering we’re at 16,000 ft.  Hopefully we’ll get a bit of sunshine to help dry things out a bit.  Our home here is definitely the most well-appointed base camp I’ve experienced on any climb and I congratulate CTSS for helping to make an old climber comfortable 😊

 

September 12

I’m looking forward to a little fun today.  It’s an active rest day which means mostly hanging around but at 11:00 am we’re all headed to a close part of the glacier for some steep ice wall training.  It’s important to practice our skills and using our specific climbing harness rigs when we’re well-rested to a point of second nature so that when we’re up high on the mountain, tired and hypoxic, we don’t screw up.  The days dawns partly clear and we get a great view all the way down the valley past Samagaun to the next village or two. 

When we get to the glacier, we can see this part of it is at least 75 degrees vertical and should be representative of anything we will encounter on the upper mountain.  The most technical part of our climb is between Camp 1 and Camp 2 and we want to be well-prepared for it.  That’s the icefall area and we’re hoping to climb through it in a couple of days.  


Our friend Pasang set up a nice route up the steepest part followed by an awkward ascending traverse to an anchor from which we will repel back to the bottom.  It takes a while to get our dozen climbers through a couple of laps and everyone does a great and safe job.  

After training, we head back to base camp for some R&R.

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