Beautiful day out, great dark blue skies. First section down the Moraine is tricky with a rope and icy slope. Then 2 hours to cross the moraine, which is very tricky, slippery and windy path.

Patrick leaves us at the end of the moraine, he is feeling sick and has had headaches for the past 2 days. The bad organisation of the expedition so far and the lack of help of the support team definitely does not help his spirits and the outlook of the trip. Patrick shares with Chris his disappointment with the support team’s service and overall adventure peaks coordination and mentions that all of us have even raised the option of cutting short the trip if things do not improve and adv peak does not step up. We spent too much time coordinating, too much effort preparing and training and too much money to be treated with disinterest from the team, being left in the dark when something happens, porters deserting us because of the snow.

We have an amazing climb to camp 1, in snow, sometimes deep which slows us down drastically. Florence is leading most of the way. I catch up during one of her rest times with some Sherpas and then arrive first at camp 1 with Junga (base camp manager) followed closely by Florence, Chris, Xavier and Glenn. We are all amazed by the stunning scenery surrounding us. We empty our bags of the climbing gear this we will need later and have Carried all the way here; crampons, helmet, harness with karabiners & jumar, ice axe. 15 minutes break and we start to head down.

3 hours later we are back at base camp. We meet patrick who is unfortunately still feeling terrible and starting to consider leaving if his state does not improve. Plagued by headaches and lack of sleep the cold mountain quickly becomes a living nightmare. Chris puts him on oxygen to help alleviate the headache pressure and sickness.
We have fun playing with the oxygen saturation device that we plug to our fingers. It’s actually quite critical to have a reading of the oxygen saturation to see how the body adapts to altitude and copes with lack of oxygen. We are both around 80-88 saturation and 70-110 heart rate.

Before bed time Chris informs us that we’d better change the next day’s program since we are all knackered by the climb. So tomorrow will be rest and producing red blood cells!