Game Over

We arrived at Camp 2 on Friday afternoon full of enthusiasm, and slept surprisingly well given the altitude and the terrain the tents were on. Unfortunately things started to unravel early on Saturday.

We were up and packed, ready to head for Camp 3, when Pasang put his head through the doorway of the tent and told us to hold fire, as the wind was too strong again. The forecast was for 100 km/h winds at midday, but the Sherpas wanted more like 40 km/h to negotiate Mushroom Ridge, an exposed knife-edge ridge between Camps 2 & 3. The route wiggles around on either side of the ridge without enough anchors, so there is a fair amount of loose rope and a fall could end up being quite significant.

The winds on Sunday 25th were supposed to be milder, so the next iteration of the plan involved leaving Camp 2 at 04:00 in the morning and heading straight for the summit, skipping Camp 3. That would have meant a longer day, but with a lighter bag (no sleeping bag or Thermarest), and seemed like a good plan for a while. By lunchtime though, the plan had changed again due to an updated forecast, and our aim was to go only as far as Camp 3 on Sunday, then the summit on Monday.

As the day wore on, the effects of the unusually strong winds hit home: as we looked down at Base Camp about 1,400m below, we noticed half the tents had gone. After a brief radio chat we established that the mess tent and 4 of the 6 sleeping tents had been blown away and hit the rocks behind camp, smashing the contents and the poles, and shredding the tents. Looking down from Camp 2 at the remains of our home, I began to understand how Princess Leia must have felt when Alderaan was destroyed.

By the end of the day, the winds were as strong as ever, and spirits were beginning to sink. Living at 6,000m begins to take its toll pretty quickly, especially somewhere as unhygienic as Camp 2, and both Jon and I were suffering from dodgy stomachs as we settled down for our second night there. Although we’d been careful to boil the water we’d had during the day, it had all come from ice chipped off the slopes by the Sherpas, and given the lower boiling point at 6,000m, probably hasn’t been purified enough. The impeccable timing of the dodgy stomach meant that I spent the night making repeated journeys, clipped into the rope, from our tent down to the area we’d agreed to use as a toilet - probably the worst place in the world to have diahorrhea.

In the morning the winds were still howling up the ridge, blowing the prayer flags vertically upwards, and blowing snow plumes off the summit of the hill. As the forecasts were received, reality began to bite, and we realised the summit attempt was on its last legs. Options of staying another night at Camp 2 were considered, but we had no idea if Camp 3 was still there and the chances of the wind falling sufficiently on Monday or Tuesday were considered too low, so by mid-morning we’d agreed to call it a day and head down to Base Camp.

The retreat to Camp 1 seemed to take a very long time - the whole thing is on fixed lines, so queues form wherever there are abseils, as that section can only have one person on it at a time. Every now and again the route crossed over onto the exposed side of the ridge and we were battered by the Baltic wind that was ruining our plans.

Eventually we made it to Camp 1, paused to change from mountaineering boots into normal boots and to have a drink, then abseiled down the last bit of fixed line and began the long walk back to the remains of Base Camp.

We finally reached Base Camp after dark, in a cloud that meant visibility was about 30m. We were fed in a rebuilt mess tent, then headed for bed. For most of us, this meant one of the tents from Camp 1 that had been brought down to replace the tents destroyed by the wind. Given the time of our arrival, we didn’t have the chance to go through the debris of the old tents to recover our stuff, so we spent the night in the same clothes we’d been wearing since leaving Base Camp 5 days earlier.

Today we’ve washed, sifted through thousands of pounds worth of tent-wreckage to retrieve what we can, and scoured the rocks behind Base Camp searching for various missing items. The yaks are leaving with our kit tonight, then we’re heading off to Pangboche tomorrow.

The mood in Base Camp isn’t too depressed today. Although everyone’s disappointed, it will be good to get home after several weeks in the mountains. It’s annoying being beaten by the weather though, as we all felt we could make it, but that’s the nature of mountaineering.