My travel diaries
Monday 7 May, 2007 - Advanced Base Camp, Everest North Side
A slightly unpleasant accident occurred during the night, and it's something I've been fearful of for some time. I've become a little complacent about filling my one litre pee bottle inside the tent during the night, typically managing between 850 and 1000ml, but never overflowing. I've been doing this so often now that I had reached the conclusion that perhaps I only have a one litre bladder after all. But no. Last night the inevitable happened. There's not a great deal you can do about it inside your tent at 6000m, other than squeeze the sphincters, stop pissing and go back to sleep. Fortunately this happened early in the night, so by morning my sleeping bag was dry and it was as though my unfortunate accident had never happened. I think it's about time I had the bag washed and restuffed, though. I've had it for nearly five years now, and never washed it in all that time because doing so would remove some of the loft from the down and make me more susceptible to cold at extreme altitudes. One other thing I'd certainly like to do before my next expedition is find one of those one and half litre bottles Mark uses.
We set off ambling at about 9.15 this morning, and have about another 300m of ascent to Advanced Base Camp (ABC) at 6400m. We continue along the Magic Highway all the way, although there is one interesting section where the glacier has resurfaced from the moraine and an ice lake has formed in the middle of it. This involves a short traverse around an ice wall with aid of a fixed rope, taking care not to slip off and land in the icy waters, though it's nothing too difficult. The yaks catch us up while we're doing this, and simply continue onwards through the lake (well, they can't very well use the fixed rope, after all).
We get to ABC at midday. I have a headache and am tired this afternoon. I didn't get much sleep last night from lying on a bed of rocks, and it's snowing when we arrive. Mark and I pitch our tent at the top of the slope next to a large windsock erected by the Chinese team camped next to us who are taking weather readings. I try to force down some food at lunchtime, but my appetite isn't great.
Later in the afternoon the weather improves and we get a good view of Lhakpa Ri rising up above us on the opposite side of the East Rongbuk Glacier, but I decide to spend the afternoon sleeping.
I've been unable to find any reliable information about the early history of Lhakpa Ri, the mountain we hope to climb ourselves in four days' time. Although George Mallory crossed the Lhakpa La, a col beneath it, while looking for a route to the North Col of Everest in 1921, it is unlikely he climbed its summit. Most sources on the internet quote the mountain as first being climbed by Bill Tilman in 1936. However, as Tilman wasn't a member of the only expedition to Everest that year, led by Hugh Ruttledge, this seems unlikely. The mountain was probably first climbed during Eric Shipton's reconnaissance expedition to Everest in 1935. The main aim of this expedition was to see whether an attempt on Everest was feasible during the monsoon season, but Shipton took the opportunity of a break from concentrating on the summit to explore the surrounding mountains. In all, 24 peaks over 20,000 feet in height were climbed for the very first time on that expedition, 17 of them by Bill Tilman and his climbing partner Edmond Wigram, including two peaks south of the Lhakpa La, one of which may well have been Lhakpa Ri. A rough sketch map in Shipton's article, The Mount Everest Reconnaissance , published in the Geographical Journal, contains a cross to denote a peak climbed in approximately the location of Lhakpa Ri. It seems most likely, therefore, that the mountain was first climbed in 1935, probably by Tilman and Wigram.
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