Summit bid – Day 53/54 – May 22/23 – To the Balcony (8400m)
We started getting ready at about 6:45pm, just as it was getting dark. I was still very anxious. I was wavering between absolute confidence and absolute hopelessness but I knew I wasn’t going to give up easily. I was up and ready by 7:55pm, waiting for my Sherpa to get ready. He wasn’t ready until 8:15pm. I remember getting annoyed waiting in the cold. We were late by 15mins and that costed us a lot during our summit bid. Within about 20mins, we were stuck behind a few people. As time passed, there were more and more people who were slow in front of us, and soon we were stuck behind a slow moving queue of about 30-40 people. As we inched our way up, the queue started to grow behind us. In a way, I was glad, because I wasn’t sure how slow I was going to be and now I am left with little choice but to be slow. However, after about an hour I started to get worried. The queue was a bit too slow. It is a disaster waiting to happen, especially if the weather turns but more so on the unnecessary wastage of our precious Oxygen and possible exposure to Frost bite, waiting away in the queue and getting cold.
Camp 4 area
Unfortunately, little could be done. Overtaking wasn’t easy, as the climbers were right behind each other. Every 50m or so, you could see the slower climbers dropping off to take a break, and the queue getting a tad bit faster. But, it was inching very slowly all the way to the balcony. We managed to overtake a few people on the way, when we got a chance but everytime I overtook a person, I was out of breath for a minute or two. It was hard work at that altitude. We finally reached the Balcony after 6 hours, 2 hours longer than planned. I had reduced my Oxygen from 3.0 to 2.5 and further down to 2.0 somewhere along the way.
Some emergency Oxygen tanks along the way
The balcony was a small area where climbers would switch Oxygen bottles. One bottle isn’t enough to go up all the way to the summit and back. So, we dropped the bottle we were using and got ourselves a brand new bottle. This process helped relax the queue a little bit. Unfortunately, we had a bit of trouble with my Oxygen bottle and we couldn’t close it properly. That took a fair bit of time. My Sherpa also took sometime to sort his own stuff out. Fortunately, my throat was still in terrible condition that I didn’t waste anytime bothering with food. I knew, it was a bad idea but I just couldn’t manage to swallow anything solid. I just grabbed an energy tablet and sucked on it. We spent atleast 15mins at the balcony when we should have been there for less than 10mins. Neverthless, we left the balcony with barely anyone in front of us.
