It’s my first day at Advance Base Camp, and I’ve had the most horrible night so far. A combination of extreme altitude (6450m) triggering some of the symptoms of AMS, and a uncomfortable position in the tent, with a very uneven surface making the exercise of sleep somewhat similar to a stunt of Cirque du Soleil. One of my climbing partners sleeping two tents away from mine sounded like in agony the whole night. Its was horrible to hear him winging loud all night long. He woke up and said that was the worst night of his life. I was so worried thinking he was already affected by HAPE or HACE… I knew our Expedition Leader would take care of him and thus I was waiting in my tent trying to fall asleep. And when I finally did I have the most spooky dreams. Some of my colleagues told me the also have these sort of dreams at high altitude. In my case it was all about anxiety and confronting with some of the people I love the most. Do you normally have these dreams where you want to get somewhere but you can’t because you move very slowly? You run and your goal is far, and you can can run fast, and the time goes away. My dreams this night were somehow similar, with the only difference that I was running very fast but not being able to reach my goal. Everything on my dreams tonight was extremely fast, like my heart rate I guess… Very extenuating dreams, lots of anxiety… I don’t know how many night I’ll have to suffer like this :S
Today I feel so tired… I took a quick nap that I restricted to about an hour, because the idea of sleeping during the day and being awake the whole night simply terrifies me :S I feel so bored of resting the whole day… Laying down somewhere all the time, restricting the exercise to a five meters walk from my tent to the dinning tent just to prevent myself from running out of breath again… I’m not hungry at all, and seeing all yummy food prepared by our skilled cook Pumba (The Lazy Lama) passing in front of my eyes in the dinning tent makes me feel sick. I also feel apathetic… I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to read, I’m not interested on the music in my iPods, I have nothing to write about, no photos to take, and I don’t even want to stare at the Holy Mother, Mt Everest 😦
We now have a weather forecast predicting the Jet Stream to move towards the North side around the 27th. That means we have some few days to squeeze two rotations in, or to rest “well” at ABC and tag the North Col once before we retreat to Base Camp.
Unlimited Potential, Up to 8000m 