Advanced Base Camp & the Puja

acclimatising and showing respect for the mountain

humour returns

27 April - ABC - 5700m

It stopped snowing sometime in the early morning and we awoke to a wonderful clear day. Usually ABC is snow-free, with just the occasional dusting, however this time there is snow lying around.

Photo by Thomas Gygax

The big news was Moe took some Diamox last evening and this morning his oxygen saturation was significantly higher and although he didn't feel bad before, he feels even better. The down side was filling a 1.5 litre pee bottle in one hit, twice in the night!

Topke heads out to get water, over 400m away.
The yaks delivered the last of our supplies from BC but were so tired they
stayed overnight in the snow and were fed grass in the morning. The peak in the background is Chomo Rabzang, 6666m high.

Today we were busy doing nothing, relocating tents, tidying gear and I don't know what else. One of the other teams pointed out we have 6 different nationalities, and the comments/jokes flying around the table certainly reveal the variety.

Tomorrow we will have our Puja, or ceremony to show respect to the mountain, and then if the weather is still good, we might take a walk up to depot camp, ie half way to Camp 1 and return to ABC for the night.

28 April - Puja

We were lucky, for our puja (ceremony to show respect for the mountain) it was wonderfully clear, most importantly Cho Oyu was clear, with the Dutch Ski expedition sole remaining climber and two sherpas heading to the summit. We could see them thru binoculars.

Namgyal holds the chotar (pole) as the lungta or prayer flags are strung out
in the five Tibetan directions (N-E-S-W and the fifth is up).

After the puja, and after lunch we headed up to take light loads to Depot camp (which I have also called Lake camp and half camp previously). The 3 climbing sherpas plus Topke raced up and our team all went well, with the slowest taking 3 hours up (including breaks). We returned in light snow. Patrick, the diabetic found his sugar levels getting dangerously low but fortuitously Karsang brought up a thermos of juice half an hour above camp which helped solve the problem. Patrick had of course been monitoring his levels but there comes a point where food no longer helps and juice or coke etc are much faster acting.

The trail from ABC to Depot camp passes around the side of these ice pinnacles. Normally the trail is snow-free, but not this time!

29 April - ABC preparation

Today everyone prepared for tomorrow and our big acclimatization trip on the mountain. Rather embarrassingly only today we discovered that one of our ABC tents is unoccupied, and has been unoccupied since it was put up four days ago!