Base Camp days slip by

Above: Tom at ABC where our hand washing water froze even during a sunny day, and Tom climbing above the colourful tents of ABC

Back at BC now: with our USB internet stick not working again today, I paid a visit to Mr Grant over at Phil’s camp, and as always was sucked into a vortex of chat, lies and jokes and more damn lies. I have to report that Grant is still wearing the same blue (green around the gills) t-shirt as yesterday, that still smells the same as it did the day before, before his wash. What is that manly odour one might ask?

Not that we are entirely odour-free. Seemingly we must be somewhat comfortable with ourselves though as the majority of us didn’t need to shower the first day available, what is one more day after a week without a scrub? Well, either use deodorant religiously, or without you probably reach peak smell on the second day or so, and then it probably doesn’t get much worse after that, especially if you change your next to skin garments (ok, your gruts) within the week. Despite the bravado and the laziness, it does feel good to change into clean clothes though. It is one of those things that perhaps we really should factor in a little quicker when returning to the possibility of a real shower. Of course, none of us have partners up here otherwise there might be more rigorous scrubbing, or greater howls of indignation.

Apparently Grant was awarded blog of the day by Alan Arnette but we can't read each other’s blog, nor many other friends, as that sort of free expression is limited where we are. At least we still have alcohol. I am amazed Phil’s team does though. I hope he has just ordered it by the tanker this time. It was a little embarrassing to find the beer I thought we had was in fact up at ABC, luckily last year’s Chateau Cardboard has aged well and we didn’t have to delve further into the puja rum and whiskey. We will have to restock for visitors though. Tomorrow’s job.

With all our meals provided the days can be filled with promises of walks – “exercise every day here otherwise you will deteriorate” as I say, and after trying to pry out gossip tidbits about other teams then it comes to analyzing weather. While detailed paid forecasts have their place, and I will use them high on the mountain because I don’t have direct net access, there is a lot of free info on the net. Most crucially with either it is easy to get caught up in the day to day wind speeds (will our ABC tents handle it?) and miss the bigger picture. Even with a set of numbers or graphs showing the dropping wind speeds, the more elegant understanding is of the real jet stream pattern as it kinks and snakes above us. Or rather in the last period has straightlined above us. Now with the more usual curved Roberson waves (hope I have my technical term correct there) appearing, I can start to make a better guess about the longer term trends again.

I have refused to be drawn so far on the extent of the low winds window coming up but perhaps within the next day or two, it will be fairly obvious. What most people know now though is the coming period of lesser winds (with greater afternoon cloud and perhaps sprinklings of snow) is the time to move oxygen up to Camp 3 (8210m) in preparation, and this is the biggest job of the climbing sherpas prior to the summit push.

And what of the rest of the day? For me it is easy, emails about trips still flow in, and with Kim exploring the upper reach of Mustang and Luke at Shishapangma more or less out of contact, there are plenty to work on. Of other people I am not sure but that exercise doesn't happen often enough. Perhaps tomorrow!