near Ramche (c.2700m) > Salija (c.2600m): A rock in a hard place

What a night!

I awoke in so much pain. Midway through the night I discovered that my sleeping mat was planted firmly on the top of a baseball sized rock. Which also just happened to be conveniently located right in my lumbar region. Add to that the pleasurable fact that the tent ground hadn’t been cleared fully and the snow underneath had developed into ice overnight and I was in heaven.

I wish I could sleep in those conditions every night, hmm.

At least it was bright and clear this morning… Not that traipsing through a foot of snow was very appetising. The walk to Salija (circa 2600m) seemed fair enough. With the guys returning a day earlier from high camp, Ang decided to split the last 2 days to fit into 3 days.

What a nice idea… Pity about the bastard of a day yesterday, hah!

The morning was like any other… Through snow, some uphill, some down.

We had lunch in Nangi (circa 2000m), which doesn’t look a long way on the map, but we had to spend a lot of time getting back on the trail we so conveniently misplaced yesterday.

After lunch, it’s away again… Onwards to Salija.

Little did we know we’d be scaling icy rockfaces on this trip. But that’s exactly what we did. For roughly 2 hours non-stop. I enjoyed it… I’m not sure about the others though.

And in the midst of our ice climbing, we encountered a kitchen porter or three. One of them had fallen down the icy face and lost all of his pots. There were a few of them recovering everything, and he turned out to be alright… But jeez, this wasn’t a 2m drop… The face was about 15m at maybe 65 degrees.

Not an orgasmic fall in any case.

So yeah, after than excitement in the afternoon, we arrived at camp pretty early. A light snowy carpet, and relative normality beginning to return. I still had bounds of energy to burn, so played a little hacky sack – Nepalese style with the rubber thing – with the porters in the snow.

Thorough enjoyment… apart from saturating my pants.