Monday 18th April, 8pm. Base Camp
(EST is 9 hours 45mins behind Nepal)

Harold and Sean starting acclimatising to life at Base Camp

Diary by Harold Mah

Base Camp

Sean and I are in rest and recovery mode. We spent the day on basic body maintenance – fixing broken skin, soothing burned skin and eating vitamin rich food. We have also been unpacking and packing our gear to try and get it to the barest minimum weight for our next ascent, and playing with the Base Camp radios as we have had power problems.

There are five of us in the tent – Sean, me and three sherpas – and we spend a lot of time making jokes and teasing each other. Now that the group is a lot smaller we spend a lot more time with each other and get to know each other well.

Last night, for the first time I got too hot in my sleeping bag and I had to open it up. The sherpas said that this was because I had spent two nights at Camp 1 and that my body has become more acclimatised. Sean and I have noticed that we don’t get out of breath nearly as much now when we walk around Base Camp, which is a good thing.

Sean had a visit today from Jim Harvey, who is also from Almonte. Ontario. He and his wife Vera, and a party of 13 others, are trekking in Nepal and wanted to celebrate her 60th birthday in this beautiful country, which they did last Friday. They are staying at Gorak Shep, just back down the trail a bit.

This evening we had dinner with a group from Canada, Argentina and France. It’s a wonderfully diverse group of people here at Base Camp. Many of them are now bugging me to borrow my movies because I had the foresight to bring a bunch of DVDs with me! It’s starting to get pretty boring at Base Camp while you’re acclimatising, but the constant stream of international climbers and hikers makes for some fun conversations.

Today I met a guide called Kenton Cool. He lives in Chevigny in France but is originally from Sheffield in England. He’s leading a party of 5 climbers – three Australians, one Norwegian and one Canadian and has been guiding climbers for over 5 years in places as far afield as Italy, Pakistan, Nepal, France, Switzerland, Scotland, Wales and Alaska. He has a long pedigree of climbing including successfully summiting Everest last year (in the process losing 30 pounds!) and also conquering the south west face of Annapurna (8,091m) in the Himalayas and Arwa Spire (6,100m) in India. For the Annapurna climb he was nominated for a French climbing award. He reckons that he spends 300 days a year climbing and guiding. Luckily his family lives close to Heathrow airport so he can see them relatively quickly when he’s back in the UK.

More later

Harold

Harold Mah is staying at Base Camp to support Sean Egan when he makes his summit attempt in May.