to touch the mountain

Today I head up the mountain with a large load to camp at intermediate site (16500) just below advanced base camp, by myself. We sent young Mark down to Deboche to recover accompanied by Nima. The plan is to establish came 1 tomorrow, then move to camp 2 and then the summit. My personal plan is to touch the mountain. Three groups of climbers have returned to base without summitting. Conditions above the Dablam are solid blue ice

Ueli Steck, the Swiss machine and Freddy Wilkenson were at camp 3 last night, perhaps I will run into them on my way up.  Steck was the first recipient of the Eiger Award for his mountaineering achievements. Wilkenson has spent the last ten years perfecting a unique style of full gonzo adventure climbing and is a great story teller.

 Yesterday was a rest day so I sat in the tent pondering the allegory of the tame olive tree, eating comfort food, packing for the trip today and building a large Richard Longrsque rock mandala in the valley which attracted several curious people including JT who threw in the last random stone which landed in the perfect spot.

Ask Dan, I rarely go out to lunch here, here I go out to breakfast lunch, and dinner every day in the blue tent. Here taking a shower is w big event involving careful planning. I noticed a nice community with nature, our water comes from the same stream where yaks wade...today i started using my water filter pump, even though the water we are served is boiled.

So now I start the walk into the mountain, 

goodbye everyone, 

namaste

to the meadows

The Long Walk

Today Chris and I did the long walk again to advanced base camp. Mark is very sick as is Meryl. Our walk was a little less windy but the clouds rolled in along with the snow flakes. what can this long hike teach us, I wonder. Today I collected rocks and documented the lichens and small plants. We decided to set up a high base camp to avoid the long walk back to main base camp. This means, of course, no one waiting with hot soup, but are ready to really get moving on the mountain. We found a lovely sheltered place with snow for water.

Preparing

If things go well, it will take nine days to climb the mountain, including days of ferrying gear and coming down to base camp to rest. Today we make the hike to advanced base camp, carrying hear up an acclimatizing. ABC is at 17,500 ft. about 1000 ft below camp 1. It was a long very beautiful hike, maybe 8 to 10 miles round trip. I am taking diamox to acclimatize and am feeling great. I touched the mountain today, touching the top of a mountain is not so important in itself, but the quest gives the entire journey a different hopefully more profound meaning. When we returned to base camp Rama was waiting with warm Tang and then hot soup. Our tents are all encircled by strings of prayer flags.

I introduced Ama Dablam here. The most popular route is up the southwest ridge shown above. The mountain was first climbed on March 13, 1961 by Mike Gill, Barry Bishop, Mike Ward, and Wally Romanes via this route. They were well-acclimatised to the altitude.

In 2006, there was an avalanche caused from the collapse of a large serac which killed six climbers at Camp 3.

Pangboche to Ama Dablam

Walked to Pangboche at 13,000 feet for lunch. Great views of Ama Dablam. It is Sunday so I read the bok of Isaiah and spun the prayer wheels all around the monastery and walked around the prayer alters stacked with stone tablets engraved with Buddhist magic, We eat mostly local food, potatoes, a mustard green type vegetable we see growing in the mountain gardens, and eggs. Like captain Ahab we study the mountain and the charts up the mountain unceasingly. We arrive at Ama Dablam base camp early afternoon and 15,136 feet. It is incredibly beautiful, mountains on every side. We could see huge plumes of snow blowing off  Mt Everest as we walked in. I was late for dinner because I started climbing around looking for rocks and bones and tattered prayer flags

a prayer

I sleep in a spacious tent all to myself, there is also a dining tent and a small shower tent. We are preparing to have all the gear blessed by a Buddhist lama, The blessing consisted of very long chants and making lots of smoke with green branches, throwing rice and water. I saw the lama rise up in the air along with his mat, but the rest of the team missed it, having not practiced the art of staying awake through long church meetings. After we had our faces smeared with flour for good luck and were given a metal plate of crackers and something that may have once been cheese. Nima set our strings of prayer flags in the four cardinal directions.

Tengbuche

It reminded me of Peru, I was so sick I slept or 19 hours, woke up and it was time to walk to Tengbuche at 12,668. The mountain is in full view now and everyone is discussing the route. Pulse rate and O2 sat scores. We went to a monastery to hear the chanting service and gaze at the walls covered in paintings.

af

first views of base camp