Today the rest of the group showed up and my bride of 28 years this month headed down to Pheriche. I had intended to hike back to base camp but the weather turned bad and the group was late getting out of Lobuche. There isn’t anything happening at base camp yet but I didn’t want to be stuck here by myself. Nevertheless with the snow, wind, short time and dead batteries in my base camp radio it just wasn’t smart to start out. I firmly believe that much of safe climbing or diving or flying for that matter comes down to exercising self discipline. Whether it is clipping in to a fixed line for an easy traverse or using a check list before every take off these small exercises in self discipline provide that extra margin of safety. This has been my bluest day on the mountain. For some reason my mind drifted to the time in the Canadian Rockies that I did a small afternoon hike up a little peak that I don’t even remember the name of. I made it to the top without to much trouble. When you are going up it is hard to get lost. If there is still more up you haven’t arrived. I took a compass bearing to where I wanted to come down and started down. Once I got in the tree line I had to traverse a couple of steep ravines. After a while I began to wonder if I had missed the end of the road. I eventually called Terri on the cell phone. She drove to the end of the road and blew the horn. I had only been a few hundred yards away but I could have easily missed it and had a long walk back up. That has been a metaphor for our lives. She has always been my anchor. Always there to blow the horn if I needed to find my way home. I already miss her terribly.