Rest and re-energize day. Met Victor, my guide from Mont Blanc who summitted on the 17th. His whole team had successfully summitted on the 17th and apparently about 90+ people, including Sherpas, had attempted summit on that day and a fair number of them succeeded. According, to our weather report, it wasn’t the best of days to summit but in reality it turned out to be a decent day for summit. Let’s just hope, 22nd turns out to be a good enough day too. We spent the day sorting out gear and snacks for Camp 3, Camp 4 and Summit. We would be taking bare minimum gear at this stage as every gram makes a difference. Apart from what I was going to wear, my summit gear would only include ski goggles, 2 litres of water, 2 cameras and my satellite phone. I decided to carry a light-weight SLR camera to the summit. The SLR and Sat phone were certainly excess luggage. It was a big decision in terms weight vs benefit. Considering, my camera didn’t work on top of Cho Oyu (sixth highest mountain in the world), I didn’t want to take any chances. Mike did mention, there should be someone or the other at the summit, just in case my camera didn’t work but I still decided it was worth the weight. As for the Sat phone, it would be nice to make the ‘I made it’ call from the top
Day 50 – Sorting out snacks
We also made sure to eat as much as we could; chocolates and other high calorie snacks. Calories in was key as we were bound to lose a lot of energy during our summit rotation. The weather was still looking good, but the weather report suggested it could be bit windy in the morning. We crashed early and prepared ourselves for an early day the next morning.
