The morning was clear and calm this morning. I got up early to make a phone call and then spent the an hour wondering through BC. The sky starts getting light about 5:30 but the sun did not hit our spot in Camp until 7:38 this morning. That is the most important number in my morning because that is when my toes start getting the feeling back. It is pretty comfortable in my sleeping bag at night as long as I throw a Nalgene bottle with hot water in it in the foot of my bag. That and you must sleep with a knit cap on your head and, for me at least, a buff. Most people stay in the tent until the sun hits them but I have a hard time sitting still. It is an amazing experience to watch the sunlight crawl down the slopes of the adjacent mountain and work its way across base camp. The instant it hits you at this altitude you feel instant warmth. I’ll sit on a rock with a cup of coffee and let the sun warm me – just like a big lizard. Well except maybe for the coffee.

Mid-morning the team rigged some lines on some adjacent ice pinnacles and practiced some ice climbing. I am always a little surprised at the wide variety in skill levels. You can climb this mountain without good technical skills but it sure takes more energy and time. There are four main tools in a mountain climber’s arsenal: the ascender or “jumar”; the rappel device or “ATC”; crampons; and caribeaners. The ascender is a device that locks around the rope and has a ratchet that only allows the rope to move through the device in one direction. As you climb up a slope you push it ahead and if you slip it holds you to the rope. The rappel device is a piece of metal that you loop the rope through that provides friction and allows you to descend the rope and control the speed just by applying a small amount of tension against the rope. Crampons are the spikes that strap to your boots and give you purchase on the snow or ice. They also have spikes that stick out the front that you can kick into the ice to climb vertical sections. In good ice you may only be able to stick half the width of your finger into the ice but that is really all you need to hold your weight if your angle into the ice is correct. It does take a while to build confidence though. Even so sometimes a foot hold will “blow” and that is why we always have an ascender attached to the rope or a belay which I am not going to get into here. Finally caribeaners are what clip all of it together. They come in two main varieties – locking and non-locking. Generally good practice is to anchor yourself to the mountain with either two unlocking or one locking because on rare occasions a non-locking caribeaner can come off the rope.

All and all a good exercise this morning if for no other reason than to get to know who I feel comfortable climbing with.

The afternoon turned gray, cold and snowy. At 4:00 I went to mess tent for hot tea and popcorn – an afternoon tradition. The day turned more depressing with the news that a Sherpa in a neighboring camp had died from altitude sickness. Details are a little sketchy but apparently he had been sick for a couple of days and had not gone down. His fellow Sherpas had left him in the tent to rest while they carried loads up to C1. At some point the cook looked in on him and he was dead. One of our team members is a doctor but there was nothing that could be done. We heard he left a wife and two small children.

Many of the Sherpas make most of their annual income in the two months of the climbing season. They are much better acclimatized than we western lowlanders but this altitude is still dangerous even to them. This is not the first time that someone has allowed their personal needs to overcome better judgment. The shame is that usually all you have to do is go lower – even a few thousand feet can make all the difference in the world. In 2006 when I had to be evacuated by helicopter to KTM the overwhelming feeling when I got down was I could not believe I had really needed to go out. In 70 minutes and 14,000 feet down I felt only mildly off. Not even bad enough to head to the medicine cabinet. Altitude makes all the difference. Just an unnecessarily sad day.