Wake Up, Little Susie, Wake Up!

Blue coat: Troy
On Bench: Gary and Larry
Large mass on rock: Sam
Mini-Me: Tom

We're up at 12k now. This is the highest ever for Tom and Troy, but we're all feeling rather chipper. I've got increasingly bad diarreah, but am drinking about 2 gallons a day now to try to keep hydrated. We're spending 2 nights here in total. Tomorrow we'll hike up to ~ 14.5k, hang out for a few hours to better acclimate, and then hike back to 12 k. It's always tough on the psyche when you have to reclaim ground that you've already covered, but by all the mountaineering manuals, it's far easier on the body. You come back down, your body feels much stronger, you get a better nights sleep, and then you have at the vertical again the following day. So, that's what we'll do.

As evidenced above, you spend a great deal of time either (a) hiking slow or (b) sleeping on rocks. The guides constantly shout out at us Po-Le, Po-Le, which roughly translates into "dumb ass westerners trying to run up the mountain again".

The accommodations at 12k are more spartan than at 9k; the toilets (near and dear to my heart) are mainly holes in the ground now, with one "throne" 1/4 heigth normal toilet that everyone queues up for. The cooks are doing a stellar job with meals, but the reality of this vertical is that we're not very hungry...even though we really need to eat to rebuild the muscle we've lost from the days climb. Plus, at this altitude you start really dehydrating, so you have to drink constantly.

We're quite thankful that we have huts, as there are a number of hikers who have to setup camp upon arrival, and I'm certain that your sleep is nowhere near as restful on the ground...not like we're in a heavenly bed or anything like that, but at least there's no tent flapping and little wind getting inside.

Tomorrow, our hike up to 14.5K

Lumpy out