My travel diaries
Thursday 16 August, 2007 - Camp 2, Muztag Ata, Xinjiang, China
We intend to leave camp at 6.30 again this morning to avoid the worst of the sun. Again, this involves rising at 5am if we are to have sufficient time to brew tea and have breakfast before leaving. When my alarm wakes me and I hear snow pattering on the roof of the tent, I'm secretly very relieved, although I know that fresh snow will make today's climb much harder. The snow continues to patter on the tent for the next four hours. I get dressed but lie in my sleeping bag because of the cold and boil up water for a brew. At 9 o'clock the snow stops, and very abruptly David comes round and announces we will be leaving in half an hour.
Embarrassed conversation
Unfortunately the delay has brought on the thing I most feared yesterday, and I'm in need of a bowel movement. As I crouch down fearing for my life on the 45º snow slope with no privacy from the tents nearby, David in similar need crouches down next to me and strikes up a conversation, which I find slightly unsettling. It doesn't make it any easier to get the job done as quickly as I can. There are some places where conversation doesn't come easily, and this is certainly one of them.
White out
This time I'm the very last person in our group to leave camp, at 9.45. We start in sun and I make good progress, passing Geoff, Luigi, Dave on his skis and Orna fairly early on, but I then get stuck behind a Chinese porter wearing snow shoes. Everyone else is wearing crampons, and the snow shoes are churning up the path and making it much harder to climb. Eventually, with a burst of energy, I wade past him and things get easier. I catch up with Juliet and Abdullah at the start of the crevasse labyrinth, and pass through it in their company. As we begin striding up the final snow slope to Camp 2, it starts to cloud over. Abdullah pulls away from us, and by the time we reach the top of the slope, Juliet and I find ourselves in a complete whiteout, and the fresh snow has obliterated the footsteps ahead of us. Flags mark the trail at regular intervals, but visibility is so reduced that we can no longer see the next one in front. I have a look at my watch, and according to its altimeter we should be above Camp 2 by now. Can it be that we walked past it in the whiteout? We know we must be very close, so we begin shouting to see if anyone in Camp 2 can hear us and tell us which direction to go. We're in a bit of a pickle, but there's still no reason to panic if we remain where we are and wait for the cloud to clear by just a few metres. My fingers are now getting cold, so I take my pack off to put on some thicker gloves. Meanwhile, keeping me in sight, Juliet walks a little further in the direction we were originally heading. She walks only about five metres before she can see the tents. It turns out we were heading the right way all along, and only needed to walk for another 30 seconds and we'd have walked straight into camp.
Tent comfort
Relieved, we stagger to our tents, and I realise I'm absolutely knackered. Scottish Jeff, who came up here a day earlier to catch up on his acclimatisation, is now occupying our tent and he helps me to get settled. By the time I've removed my crampons and boots and climbed into the tent, my fingers are freezing, but he has his down mittens ready for me and they soon warm up again. We now have a comedy tent. Melting snow has carved a great chasm beneath us. We have the Marianas Trench in the middle, and it's clear that whoever sleeps there tonight will have the two people either side rolling into them throughout the night. When I lie on my back the roof of the tent looks like it's miles above me and I feel like I'm in a church. The only solution is to re-pitch the tent, but we just can't be bothered. Either that or persuade the third person to share with someone else.
When Geoff arrives to join us two hours later, I shout across to Juliet and Orna in the adjacent tent.
"Do you have any room for a small person? Geoff's very tired and I can think of no one better to look after him than a chef and a doctor!" They happily accept and we can hear them rearranging things inside their tent, but they don't realise that I'm joking. Luigi, meanwhile, has moved in with Toby and Lindsay, and we speculate whether they will have him up at 4am tomorrow for press-ups and kit inspection.
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