25^th October  2005

I didn’t have time to scream; my eyes bulged at the sight of the rapidly approaching mountainside, my throat constricted and suddenly we landed. A perfect textbook landing for Lukla airport, perched 2,800m high in the Himalayas. Wood smoke flavoured apple pancakes for breakfast set us up for the walk to Phakding, the first day of our four day trek to Ama Dablam base camp. It was a real relief to leave the planes and cars behind and actually start walking, to feel the path beneath your feet to inhale the scents of smoke and trees and dust, adjusting to the rhythm of the countryside and starting to acclimatise to the altitude.

This first day was easy, generally downhill through the deep forested mountain valley following the pale jade ribbon of the Dudh Khosi, the milk river. All the time we were overtaken by porters with standard 30kg loads, or more normally with double loads. The weight of these seemed to rest on the length of cloth passed from the basket on their backs across their foreheads; they stopped frequently to rest these loads on a t-shaped piece of wood carried like a trekking pole. At one surreal point later in the journey I was overtaken by a porter carrying a widescreen TV. 

26^th October

A harder day ascending 800m to Namche Bazaar a major crossroads trading town accessible only by foot, pony or helicopter. The brunt of the height gain was on the last twisting section after crossing the river on a swaying metal suspension bridge. The wind was whipping through the prayer flags, blowing their messages high into the Himalayas. Namche is a town of blue and oxide-red roofed stone buildings, market stalls, gear shops, internet cafes and bakeries broadcasting the dark side of the moon and U2 onto the steep cobbled streets. It is all nestled in a sheltered bowl below the spiny snow covered peaks and above the deep green river valley.

27^th October

A rest day. To help us to acclimatise we walked up to the Everest View Hotel. No view of Everest due to the cloud but as we walked through the short grass through a gap in the stone wall we saw the tower of Ama Dablam framed with trees of autumnal reds and golds. After the initial excitement (I think I actually jumped up and down a few times) everyone went quiet, the realisation of what we were committed to sinking in. Unlike most of the rest of the party this was my first actual view of the mountain. It hypnotises you with its perfect angles, it’s aloof isolation and the fantastical hanging glacier, the Dablam, high on its upper tower. A stunning mountain; a perfect 10.

28^th October

To Tengboche today, the site of the famous Buddist monastery perched on a spine of land jutting into the valley. It was cold in the shadow of the peaks when we arrived and it seemed natural to cosy ourselves in the tea lodge, chatting, drinking hot lemon or milky tea.

29^th October

The early morning view from my chilly tea lodge window was totally unexpected. A classic pyramidal peak nestled on the far horizon. My first view of Everest, so strange to wake up to see the highest point on earth through a frosted window, quietly having been there the whole time I had slept, unknowing. Leaving Tengboche the trail was so peaceful down through the trees and rhodedendrons on a fine dark dust and leaf mould silenced path. We crossed the river into the warmth of the sunshine further up the valley. After lunch we finally started the 2 hour ascent to Base Camp alongside a huge breeze-block grey, rock-strewn rift.

I had been concerned that Base Camp would be busy and crowded with a competitive macho culture but it wasn’t. It was a large site at 4,500m high seated in the lap of the mountain, beneath the hanging glacier. A turquoise ice fringed river meandered through it and poles topped with juniper sprigs with yellow, red, blue and white prayer flags running from them stood at intervals. There were usually a few people wandering around, either sherpas or climbers zipped up in down jackets and yaks either tethered or drinking from the stream.

30^th October

Base camp wasn’t a transit camp, very few people passed through heading for other areas. Occasionally a group would walk up from Pangboche to see the camp and the mountain but retreat again the same day. If you were at base camp you were either there to work, resting after coming down, preparing to go up or watching the mountain. One of the most emotionally draining aspects of base camp was the view. The mountain was constantly there; constantly reminding you of where you had been; where you were going; where your team members were. After a good day you had the thrill of seeing where you had climbed to. If you had had a bad day the sight of the route reminded you of the total physical emptiness you had felt, the endless grind at an unnaturally slow pace to gain altitude and the need to repeat that effort and exhaustion in order to progress further up the mountain the next time. 

Attributing human emotions to the mountain would have been easy, to imagine it glowering down on you or tempting and seducing you to climb it. However, if that felt wrong, so did the impulse ignore it’s presence and beauty and regard it as an insentient conglomeration of ice and snow and rock.. It seemed unreal. It was too big and too white and too jagged to be believable. Edges, sharp and cold scraped against the cobalt sky. The hanging glacier bulged like a pregnancy on its upper reaches slashed beneath by near vertical grey lines of rock and snow. The true reality of the mountain could only be unlocked by physical experience, step by step.

Due to the height of the mountain we had to rest and then ascend it in stages so this first couple of days were used to practice the techniques that we would use on the higher slopes. The south west ridge, the standard route, which we were climbing had fixed ropes so we practised clipping on and using jumars quickly and efficiently so that even in the fog of exhaustion we would be able to safeguard ourselves. The outline plan, which would be adapted depending on how individuals acclimatised was to trek to Advance Base Camp (ABC) at 5450m and sleep there, move on the next day to check out camp 1 (5800m) and then return to Base Camp to sleep that night. We would then incrementally use Camp 2 (5950m) and Camp 3 (6300m) in order to reach the summit.

31^st October

I felt vaguely headachy today, felt very suddenly like throwing up crawling out of the tent in the morning but was OK and ate a full breakfast. Drank about 4 litres and peed about nine times during the day, a good sign that my body was adjusting to the altitude. I was gradually noticing the physical contrast between our group and those who had been higher on the mountain; they looked weather reddened, hollow cheeked and coughed habitually.

1^st November

We started off towards Advance Base Camp at 5450m after an early lunch. At only 8k and 1000m height gain in the UK you would assume about 3 hours to get there, most people at our stage of acclimatisation would take 5 to 6 hours. I reached 5,000m, the top of the first ridge and turned back feeling utterly wasted. It was a good decision;, on the way down I developed an explosive headache. My brain felt like an angry bloated alien frantically trying to force itself out of my skull. I checked back in with Ang Neru, one of our climbing sherpas, had a couple of paracetamol, drank water and sat up in my tent deliberately not lying down as I would probably vomit. After a short while the alien settled and I lay down and slept hard. Further up the mountain as night began to fall the others straggled into Advance Base Camp.

As I listened that night to Ang Neru communicating with the leader Tim at ABC the scale of this expedition really sank in. All those books I’d read where the teams radioed into base camp suddenly felt real, I was excited and scared. This trip wasn’t about the trek in, it was about climbing this mountain. It was about coping with the draining effect of altitude; the cold; the boredom of the long nights; the relentless grind of climbing higher, descending, then pushing further, hurting more.

3^rd November

It’s not all about individual effort though, after a rest day I set off again for ABC with Kerry and Indre. Kerry set an even, manageable pace as we trudged up the first dirt brown ridge, down through the thin snow, round a grey bouldery bowl and finally up the long arm of dust and boulders to ABC set high above a frozen turquoise lake. I struggled on this last section, crashing into a wall of exhaustion even at a ludicrously slow pace; I tried to push through it once and nearly fainted. Kerry encouraged me to eat a little and we carried on. In the tent Charmian coaxed me into my down jacket and sleeping bag and made me a hot drink and soup. Slowly the drinks and paracetamol did their stuff and I felt better.

Physiologically my body was adapting quickly, which as usual involved a lot of peeing and wind. On one nocturnal trip I saw a shooting star falling towards the jagged serraced tops of Malang Phulang, another time I just peed over my bootlaces. Between forays I slept deeply. I felt so privileged to be there on the silent ridge, encircled by the pale, glistening peaks under the diamond brightness of a million stars and the silky film of the milky way.

4^th November

I felt surprisingly good given my exhaustion the previous day and decided to go to camp 1 at 5,800 in the morning and then drop down to Base Camp the same day. The walk there was slow with a trying boulder field to cross. Just below camp 1 you climb some easy angled slabs, when we reached the base of them I realised I was physically shaking, I wasn’t cold so it must just have been exhaustion. I ate a couple of cereal bars and perked up. Clipping onto the fixed ropes and moving up the boulders was a real joy, proper rock rather than scree and boulders.

Camp 1 on the ridge was a higgledy piggledy mess of large loose slabs, yellow tents, people and prayer flags with rope threading through everything. I was thrilled to be properly on the mountain and even excited about reascending from Base Camp.

6^th November

Well fed and rested I set off from basecamp for Camp 1 with Charmian at 9:30am at a slightly quicker pace than the previous time. I made sure I ate and drank regularly but again I arrived at ABC physically devastated. I sat in a spare tent trying to eat and drink a little with a eye squinting headache that paracetamol were failing to block. There were still at least a couple of hours of exhausting ascent ahead of me  and the thought of arriving at Camp 1 as a useless zombie needing to be coached into how to put on a down jacket was unbearable. I knew that in order to have any chance of summiting within the timeframe I needed to spend this night at Camp 1 and to recce Camp 2 the next day. I also knew, at that exact moment, in the yellow glare of the windblown tent that it wasn’t going to happen; Ama Dablam for me was over; the end of the South West ridge had been my summit.

There was no point just sitting there feeling shit, we spoke, Charmian went on and I descended. I strode down deliberately forcing the pace, half relieved that a decision had been made, bitter dissapointment drying my throat, physically empty, my vision burring occasionally with hissing black dots and hot tears prickling in my eyes.

The Expedition was organised by Tim Mosedale timmosedale.co.uk

Photo by: Grisha Grishkoff on Pexels.com

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