I hiked 5.5 hours down from BC yesterday.  The weather coming down was at times in snow and grapple.  I thought I was not feeling well and was a little concerned that I might be developing a pulmonary infection like in 2006 again.  When I got to Lobuche I looked at my watch and realized I had knocked 1 hour of the usual time to get there.  Apparently I was just moving faster than I should have been.  I slowed down for the last three hours and felt much better.

Pheriche is crowded.  A lot of teams have come down to rest in the thicker air.  Some are going even further down.  I’ll probably stay here but it is tempting.  It is amazing how much better you feel with every 1,000 feet of descent.  Everything here is green but it is just grass and the occasional juniper.  Three more hours down brings you into the rhododendrons which blanket the lower reaches on the Himalaya.  There are also trees – real trees.  The longer I sit here thinking about it the more likely I am to pack and hike.  So I better change the subject.

The mental game is now the most significant part of the climb.  Some of the guys started talking about McDonalds and other fast food delicacies this morning.  I finally had to remind them that if they kept talking like that it was going to be that much harder to go back to BC, soup, spam and dahlbat.  Dahlbat is rice with a lintel like sauce.  It is a Nepali staple and I like it okay, in small doses, but they eat it here everyday.

Speaking of the mental game one of the big commercial expeditions sent two teams of climbers up for their final summit push a couple of days ago.  This company uses the same weather forecast we do so we were a little confused because it looked very unlikely the winds would allow a summit bid even at the low end of the forecast.  Yesterday they pulled them all down.  I can’t tell you how that plays with your mind to make a summit bid, then after waiting several days in the unpleasant environs of C2 for the winds to be drop to be told it is useless to stay any longer and to come down.  All of this after the death in the ice fall.  We were trying to guess how many of their members will toss in the towel.  That is just so disheartening.  The lowest attrition rate any of us guessed was 20%.  The highest was 30%.  The combination of thinking it is all going to be over soon, fear, and the physical exertion of transiting the ice fall is pretty overwhelming.  I think the vast majority of BC had hoped they would get a summit chance if for no other reason than that would be less people in our way.

That is one of the reasons I prefer the non-commercial unguided climb I am on.  I will make the final decision on when to go for the summit.  Sometimes it is easier to forgive yourself for being stupid than someone you’ve paid 10’s of thousands of dollars to for their expertise.  I bet there have been some ugly words around that camp.   We have some of the most experienced climbers in the Himalaya including Apa Sherpa who has summited 18 times.  Apa now lives in Salt Lake City to be closer to his sponsors.  Everywhere we go people want his autograph and picture.  He hasn’t left his Sherpa roots though.  He is such a humble guy and always quick with advice – if you ask.  I will probably just tag along with him.

The helicopter is now a daily feature of BC now.  It isn’t just us soft amateurs that are getting chopper of either.  Altitude related problems affect people who have been here dozens of times and in only slightly less frequently than the people who are laying their eyes on Everest for the first time.   I have a good friend who has been to the top of Everest on several occasions and still had to be carried down from a much shorter mountain several years ago.  Even the Sherpa who live at 14,000 feet are not immune.

The whispers have started about another year like some in the past when the winds never dropped.  I think it is still to early for that kind of talk.  So today I’ll rest, read, breathe deep and be a bum.  Tomorrow I’ll take a hike somewhere just to keep the blood moving.  In a couple of days, depending on the forecast, I’ll start back for BC for the last time.  It will be the last time because there won’t be time to come down again before the season is over.