Our plan for this climb up the mountain was to complete our acclimatization process and put ourselves in the position to have a try at the summit.  To do that, we wanted to sleep one night at 7000m and reach the next day around 7400m and turn back to Base Camp.

Last Friday I went up with Pawel from BC straight to C2 and slept there.  On Saturday we have climbed up to C3 at 7000m. The way from C2 to C3 is basically overpassing some vertical or almost vertical seracs with some hidden crevasse fields in between.  One of the crevasses, which I could not see the bottom (not that it hadn’t any bottom but the way the light was getting inside prevented me to see it) was slightly overhanging in the upper part and we had to do some strange maneuvers to overpass it.   Not getting well hydrated I had not had one of my best days up the mountain and for me getting to 7000m this time was not really a walk in the park.  Add to this the crazy wind starting at about 6800m and I reached the camp place with almost frostbitten.  Refusing Pawel’s wish to have our tent pitched under a huge serac ( I never trust these things no matter how stable they look)  we finally got ourselves in our tiny match box.  Tiny meaning each action one of us had to do required the other to lay dawn on his side and not move.  Condensation is an ever present problem of lightweight tents at high altitude and ours was no exception, that is pouring wet from the walls on the poor beings on the floor.  Simply wonderful.

But let’s get back to the wind.  The condensation effect is more the merrier when there is some wind. Preferable some serious strong wind. Cause the wind that accompanied me from 6.8 ( that is 6800m in slang)  was serious enough and didn’t cease once our tent pitched.  Not in the evening, not in the late night, not even in the next morning. Then you have like a full storm coming down the walls in a small enclosed space, and no other place to escape.  We almost could not sleep at all since we had to brace the tent against the wind, it surely would have gone broken otherwise. It was one of the windiest nights I had. 

In the morning we were not being able to still go to 7400m since the wind was so strong.  It only softened its force once we descended close to C2.  Fearing it might get flown by the wind while us in BC, we took down the tent before leaving, covering it with some snow.

We are now in BC waiting for a good weather window to have our summit push.

On the way to the top we plan to have one more high camp, taking our tent from C3 and pitching it at about 7700m.

Pawel’s dinner quote: "Camp 4 will be butchery".