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Diary
by Toby Wootton;
"Tea
at six, in bed, breakfast at 6.30, left at seven, well actually
around 7.30, we're going on Nepali time. A steep climb to
a fairly high pass and we all knew we had a pass at 4900m
to get across that day, so it's all a bit daunting.
Because of the pace, I was breathing fairly fast, trying to
get enough air into my bad lungs and at the top I wondered
if I was going to actually make it to the end of the day at
all. Although I had Khaji carrying my pack I still had very
little strength and felt terrible, coughing all the time.
Following the first pass we descended and then climbed to
a second and down again and up to a third pass in true Nepalese
terrain style.
The time dragged for everyone, whether it was because it was
one of the biggest days, or we were all a bit sad to be well
and truly on the way down. We had lunch on a fairly exposed
side of a nondescript bit of hill and with cloud right in,
visibility was about 30 or 40 yards. As we set off again I
was careful to be a bit slower on the ascent than our pace
making sherpa, Mr Walker. This helped me a lot, if my chest
wasn't working too hard I didn't cough so much or feel so
weak.
At 2pm we came around a spur to clear skies for the first
time really during the day, to look down to what we felt looked
like sea level below us and back up the other side to the
4900m pass. Everyone was fairly knackered by this stage and
we all sort of flopped down on the floor and decided what
we were going to do. Paul suggested we camp half way up the
other side but after a group consensus we decided to go for
it, knowing that this would leave us only half a day to Luglha
for tomorrow.
The drop down took a while and then we all plodded in silence
up to what was a pass higher than Mont Blanc and higher than
most European mountains. My slow pace meant that I had to
keep awake and pick a path for myself which also made the
time go quickly and the climb fairly enjoyable. The pass was
similar to the early ones during the day, fairly craggy and
narrow, adorned with prayer flags and very defined in that
as soon as you approached it you were only on the top for
an instant, when you could see both ways, before you were
going down, down, down, back down the other side, on the home
run to Luglha.
We got to camp which was a spot half way down the other side
at around 4.30, however the porters did not all get in until
much later. We could see the lone head torches we had given
to the sherpas, bobbing around high up on the mountain, looking
for the stray porters and if we hadn't known better they could
have easily been mistaken for stars.
Eventually
all in the angry head porter and sherpas, organized a strict
disciplinary for those porters who had taken too long, they
were all supposed to be in ahead of us. Meanwhile we all fell
into our pits for a great night's sleep, after what was the
longest day of the entire trip."
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