A long night of no sleep and 100 trips to pee. The worst part of high altitude nights. No point in taking an Ambien as I would have to keep waking up anyway. More than you wanted to know.
Morning arrived, finally. Another excellent breakfast. We made our sandwiches for the day. Sun dried tomatoes, fresh basil, cheese, meat, whatever you could think of. I think lunch added another five pounds to my pack. But you need the calories.
Back up the mountain, a little higher this time. Somewhere between 16k and 17k feet. Probably closer to 16k.
We are much faster getting our harnesses and crampons on this time. Up onto the glacier. Brad climbed the nearly vertical ice wall using two curved ice axes and belay from Gaspar. I declined.
We set ice screws, made our way across steeper faces of the glacier, and did things that look worse in pictures than they seemed at the time. No sense in worrying about what you’re doing. Concentrate. Just do it. The crampons hold. It takes three hard swings of the ice ax just to get it to bite a quarter inch or so…just enough to bite. Amazing. Gaspar scampers up and down and all around. Nobody could accuse Brad and me of scampering.
My hip is hurting more. Kicking the front of my boots into the ice slopes is taking its toll. Or maybe it’s something else.
