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.