Day 14. Lobuche East High Camp to the Summit (20,075'/6119m) to High Camp
OMG - what a day! We started with bed tea at 2am. Breakfast was a boiled egg, porridge (it was yucky but I got through about half of it), and a pancake (one bite); thank goodness for hot chocolate! We're not sure where we're camping tonight so we just left the tents up and our stuff spread out in them. If it's a long day we'll stay here again. If it's a short day we'll get back down to base camp. We packed our day packs, put on our harnesses, attached our ice axes to the packs and headed off into the dark. It was a beautiful, clear and starry night. I ended up walking much of the first part with Helen, Steve, and Dawa. I don't know how the guides know where they're going. It was a pretty rough trail and involved a bit of scrambling here and there. We got up to a bit of a plateau before a rockwall just as the sun was coming up; beautiful! It was great to be so high as the sun started to hit some of the surrounding peaks.
Liba decided she wasn't going to be up for the full climb today, so turned around at this point (with Geljen). Everyone else kept going up, ever so slowly, through the rockwall before we came to our first bit of snow where we sat down to gear up. The guides put our crampons on us - talk about spoiled..... or maybe they just didn't trust us to do it right. They then put us on two ropes. Sangye took Vladka, Vera, me, Lenka and Dan. Dandi took Helen and Steve. After the first little pitch (they all felt like more than 45 degrees but I'm sure they weren't quite that steep), Sangye asked Vladka to go back to stay with Dawa. He took her down and then quickly caught back up to us.
The early part of the ascent on the rope was very steep and challenging, but I knew worse was to come since this wasn't the fixed rope section yet. When we got to the fixed rope section the order was Lenka, Helen, Steve, Vera, me, Dan. Before very long Steve's (rented) crampons broke and Vera & I had to negotiate around him. Sangye and Dan tried to fix the crampon but to avail; Steve's day was over. He retreated and waited for us at the base of the fixed ropes. Unfortunately for Helen they had chosen to carry just one backpack and Steve had it - with water, warm clothes, etc. She would probably be OK for water, though, as Lenka was carrying both her's and Dan's. Dandi was leading the way for us. We occasionally had long waits while he was fixing ropes along the route. I was often going at a pace of just one or two steps between rests. I can't imagine what it would be like near the top of Everest - almost 10,000 feet higher. The climb was very steep and the footsteps set by the folks ahead were pretty far apart. Very hard work!
There were a number of other people and groups on the mountain today, resulting in a number of other fixed ropes on the route. What really irritated me, in my oxygen-deprived state, was that the ropes were intertwined in places and it was really hard to follow one rope or the other all the way from anchor to anchor. There were definitely places that I disconnected both of my devices - not generally advisable from a safety perspective - but I didn't have the patience to work through the tangled ropes. We picked up Steve at the end of the fixed rope section. We now had a rope team of Dan, Steve, me, Vera and Sangye. Steve had to be very careful on the descent with his broken crampon. Again - it was hard to believe just how friggin' steep the whole thing is. Then it was back to where I had left my pack. I had a quick sip and snack. We picked up Vladka there and gingerly continued to make our way down. I was so slow and tired. One of our porters met us partway up and kindly offered to take my pack. I wasn't about to say "no". No pride in me today; thank you very much! I was still incredibly slow, but finally made it back to camp around 3:15. I was greeted with hugs from Liba, and hot juice followed quickly by yummy soup. Since we weren't supposed to be staying at high camp tonight, the dining tent is already gone. Snow has now started and as the evening wears on it becomes heavier. Oh well - we'll see what tomorrow brings. At least we got in our summit day. My cough has now returned with a vengeance......
Helen and Lenka (with Dandi) were the only two of our group to summit. Huge congrats to both of them!! They arrived back in camp around 4:30. It will be an early night for all of us. It's now just past 6 and I'm waiting for dinner delivery to my tent. I'm so glad I'm here and that I tried it, but I really don't need to do it again! I wonder if it's also snowing at Cho La Pass?
Here are Lenka, then Helen, arriving back in camp to big hugs from Liba.
Here are a few more of Helen's pictures from her most excellent day.
Some parting thoughts for the day...... It really is amazing how well we all did with so little verbal communication. Sangye and Dandi both have very limited English, and Liba is the only one with any Nepali. Building on the trust developed over the last two weeks, we pretty much just put our blind faith in our guides getting us up the mountain safely. We had little instruction on technique. For example - we each had an ice axe, but other than being told which hand to carry it in there was no instruction on how to use it. Some of us had more knowledge than others coming into the climb. I have no idea what level of training the guides have, but Liba mentioned that she is going to leave her crampons and ice axe behind for Dawa because he might like to train to become a guide. After knowing what our ACMG guides go through, I'm thinking the Nepali guides may count on a bit more luck. Also - as participants, if we were to undertake something like this in Canada we would probably be given at least several hours of training and safety prep. As we ascended all of the anchors seemed secure, so that wasn't a problem. But, as Dandi was setting new anchors above us he sent pieces of the glacier flying down unpredictably. Thank goodness no one took one in the head. Also - the many ropes were of different diameters and at least one was badly frayed. I'm not sure just how well the prusik cord actually worked on some of the smaller diameter rope. And - as already mentioned, the competing ropes were often tangled which I'm sure is a safely no-no. Oh well - we're all here safe and sound. And - both Sangye and Dandi appeared to be very competent and concerned with our safety and well being at all times. Many thanks to them both.
And it seems that Sangye deemed my climb "close enough" to get this certificate from the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
I came across this line years later in a book called "Regions of the Heart" by David Rose and Ed Douglas: To those who have never tried to climb a Himalayan mountain, the intensity of the hardship involved in simple existence is difficult to convey". They were really talking about the big mountains like the 8000m peaks, but for me this mountain was big enough!
