A LOT of Tent Time
April 23
The sun blessed us for a good chunk today!! Our tents warmed (mitigated the inside melt) and all my energy was RENEWED! Still crazy windy and cold, couple snow showers, but the defrost was a gift from lady Everest!
As for the team that rolled in half dead: A mix of men from numerous countries. A few that came up from EBC last minute and ZERO experience repelling, ice climbing, and using an ascender. Now I understand why it took them so long and why there was crying. They do not realize how close they were to being stranded in the DANGEROUS Khumbu Ice Fall, in a life threatening snow storm. This is how people die. If not for Atache’ finding them, they would have froze. We found out today that Atache’ even got them into tents and put blankets over some of them, too exhausted to even get themselves into position for the night.
The one thing they DID manage to get into Camp 1 was their DRONE! Oh, thank goodness (said with extreme sarcasm). What ever would we do without another freaking drone capturing our private moments of using the restroom (too windy for a tent. So, just you, the wind blown snowdrift and nothing to shelter behind)? Seriously, I am finally having a moment and a drone, at 19.8K ft, comes up right behind me. I better get paid royalties on this. Ok, I’ll stop venting now
Back to our story…
Hopefully, if Ice Doctors fix the collapsed routes, we will head back down to Base Camp tomorrow! Looking forward to exercising DOWNHILL SKILLS!
About the author : Kim
