My travel diaries
Wednesday 2 May, 2007 - Everest Base Camp, Tibet
At 9am we go up onto a glacier coming down from a hillside a few hundred metres from where we are camped for some skills training, practicing with the ice axe and crampons to begin with. The glacier is quite good for this because there are no large crevasses to fall into, and there is a selection of easy flat bits and short vertical steps ranging from two to a dozen feet in height to climb up. It's more of a snowfield than a glacier. When we reach the top we turn back to practice some rope work. The day started out with clear blue skies, but as the morning has progressed it has clouded over and the weather gradually worsens. Before long we have have our water and windproofs on and a decent amount of snow is falling.
Mic shows us a method of tying into our harnesses with the rope rather than clipping in with a carabiner. Tim, who is walking at the front of the rope, is instructed to simulate falling into a crevasse, which he performs very theatrically, complete with gurgling noise as he disappears over a lip. This provokes much hilarity. Afterwards we practise some abseiling. This is useful for me because I've never used a figure-of-eight abseil device before, just an ordinary belay device that rock climbers use down my local climbing wall. The figure-of-eight device is considered more practical for mountaineering because it has a wider opening to thread the rope through and hence is easier to attach to when the rope is frozen. We practise a full abseil, a sports abseil (not as secure, but quicker), something called a klemheist, which involves pushing a prussic loop (a short circle of cord) along the rope, and then a technique for traversing ridges which involves just clipping to the rope with a carabiner.
In the afternoon it's snowing at Base Camp, which means reading and playing cards in the mess tent. That evening at dinner, after Tim accidentally spills a pot of hot water over his crotch, I end up having to tell the story about the time I thought I'd shat myself while climbing Mera Peak in Nepal. The nub of this story is that while getting ready for our summit attempt inside my tent I spill hot water over my crotch. As we ascend in temperatures that can only properly be described as f---ing freezing (around minus 30 degrees celsius) the water slowly begins to freeze. Then we have to stop for about 20 minutes to wait for somebody else on the rope to refit a crampon which has fallen off their boot. During our wait I'm compelled to let out a bit of gas, but think I've followed through. There's no real way of knowing, and I continue my climb all the way to the summit and back down again to our high camp before I can find out for sure. I then have to go through the embarrassing scenario of warning my tent mate Huw that I might need to change my underpants and that it might be slightly unpleasant. He was very polite about it, and we were both pleased to discover it had all been a false alarm.
"Apart from that, it was an uneventful ascent," says Bunter.
"Well no, actually," I continue, and then tell him how I end up getting a little bit of frostnip, fortunately just on my fingers and toes. I arrive back in England with a black little toe and fingertips which don't regain sensation for another month.
"Well, it's good for the count," says Mic.
"The count," I reply. "What count? Count Dracula?"
"No, the sperm count."
"Are you trying to tell me frostbite on the genitals is good for your sperm count?"
"Well, except if it drops off," says Mark. "In which case your sperm count might be huge, but the delivery mechanism's somewhat limited."
The toilet humour continues through dinner. I express concern about filling 950ml of my 1 litre pee bottle every night, and feel that one of these days an accident is inevitable.
"That's nothing," says Tim. "Last night I filled my one and a half litre pee bottle twice."
Mark and I glance across each other with expressions that say, "we're not worthy." I've heard it said that as you get older you pee more frequently but with less volume. Tim, who retired last year, is evidently still in good physical shape.
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