Day 16: Getting ready to tag North Col

Today Saturday April 20th is our last day in the comfort of the Altitude Junkies Base Camp.

After few days of bad sleep in my tent, last night I managed to get proper sleep which make me happy knowing that I have about 24h to start moving higher up. I’m not feeling any strong but so far I haven’t feel sick a single day. I’m a bit worried about my difficulties to breath while I sleep but I know what to do and I’m ready to start punting in action things I learnt thorough the years.

We have carefully reviewed our climbing strategy and the options, as well as the usage of oxygen from Camp 2.

Tomorrow afternoon we’ll move from Base Camp (5200m) to Interim Camp (5800m) to spend the minimum tent in the dirtiest place of the whole mountain. Early in the morning we’ll move to Advance Base Camp (6400m) where we’ll rest for about three days before trying to tag the North Col (Camp 1, 7000m). We might rest at Advance Base Camp for another three days before tagging North Col again and coming back to Base Camp for 5-7 days rest. This is what we call rotations. We don’t care about the crazy schedules of the swiss and germans teams where they do 3 or more rotations, burning themselves completely before the summit push. We Altitude Junkies will take it easy and might one do just one if we feel with that we are ready to conquer the highest peak on Earth.

Let the climbing game begin!