Thoru Chuli camp 1

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We lost one of our porters yesterday and so we split up what he was carrying, but Dawa carried the most, here he is arriving in the fog. It was a little depressing being in the rain and fog all day, so I visited all four guest lodges and did a few drawings.

The owner of the lodge, sitting next to me, informed me that I would be getting a roommate. I immediately thought of quequeg and Ishmael, but he turned out to be a young Korean man, I told him the rules and cleared off the extra bed of the mountain of gear I was sorting. 

Dawa posed for his portrait. He is our main guide to this region, and is extremely strong. 

This morning, as we had arranged, Nima knocked on my door  at 5:30 am to tell me that it was clearing. So I ran outside to see the mountain. This is the sun grazing Annapurna south.

This is our first view of Tharpu Chuli.

Everyone else got out of bed also, but they were all going back down.  I was so excited I told Nima that we needed to start climbing right now, forget about breakfast lets get our boots on.  But Dawa said it was not that simple, we had to negotiate some fixed line rappels and difficult route finding through rock and snow.

The view of Machhapruche from the bottom of the rappel. It was my job to rappel down the fixed line and clear any obstacles and untangle the ropes.

The view of Tharpu Chuli from the top of the ridge.

The idea was to rappel into the canyon  below the ridge so that we could walk over to the ascent coullar. Because it has been so warm and raining, there were constant rock slides coming down the side of the ridge. We could also hear the occasional distant roar avalanches on the slopes of Annapurna

This is the glacier moraine we traversed beneath the ridge. 

The ascent to high camp was up this very loose couloir. We decided to make a camp here, and left the gear we were carrying, which did not include boots, crampons or sleeping bags. We contemplated leaving me there, while. Nima brought up the remaining equipment, but opted to return to the Annapurna base camp and do a very early climb tomorrow, the charge up to high camp. We are very worried about the loose rock and the prospect of soft snow higher up the mountain.