After a breakfast of porridge, omelette and cornflakes we donned our trekking gear for an acclimatisation walk down the wide glacial valley and up onto a ridge. Apart from some thin low scrub and the sparse river everything here is brown; dirt and rock. The altitude at base camp is 4,900m and we climbed to over 5,300m. The views of Cho Oyu were magnificent. She is pristine white set in a crystal clear azure sky. Only the persistent plume of snow being blown from the summit gives an indication of how strong the wind is. At over 8,200m (around the hight that jet airliners fly) the summit of Cho Oyu is impacted by the jet stream. We could see all of our route up the mountain and could see that the weather remains poor; i.e. very high winds. We are in a considerably better position still being in Base Camp than the 20 or so other teams who have already moved to ABC. They will be cold and frustrated waiting for the weather window. We have already seen some people coming back down either because their schedule does not allow them to wait longer, or due to sickness.
After a great lunch of chipatties, rice, vegetables and tinned tuna we rested. I washed some socks, underwear and trekking t-shirts as the next opportunity may be several days away.
A couple of the team are suffering some symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) but they still managed to do the walk today. Spirits remain very high.
I am feeling fine and have had no headaches or sickness and have even managed a couple of good nights of sleep, that is sleep in between the stray dogs barking and the constant to-ing and fro-ing of supply trucks bouncing down the rough track towards ABC. I do however have a sore leg due to an insect bite that seems to have gone septic. It isn't stopping me walking but I will need to lance and clean it before any infection spreads.
As I sign off this blog I can hear a Tibetan worker chanting just outside the tent in the sunshine, while across the track in the camp staff compound there is what sounds like the Tibetan top 20 being played on a radio.
Tomorrow we move up the glacier towards ABC. We shall spend 1 night in an interim camp at roughly the halfway point, atop a lateral moraine alongside the Gyrabrag glacier. It's going to get very real very quickly. I hope to send a blog from there but that may not be possible.