2007-05-25 Friday Everest Base Camp -> Lobuche altitude 4940m

The base camp doctor gave me codeine last night to suppress the coughing reflex which seems to have worked. There was a party last night which I did not attend, preferring to go to bed very early. At the party, they handed out Cauldwell Xtreme Everest medal on a prayer scarf. I got mine at breakfast this morning. After today we only have to do the daily diary at Namche and at Katmandu. The intention today was to start walking at 06:00, having breakfasted and done our daily diaries. We diaried OK, but breakfast was a bit chaotic and the organisation of the group into subgroups, each of which were doing something different caused further chaos so that we did not get up going unti 07:00 amid much grumbling. Fletcher proved incapable of moving at anything other than a snail's pace, and I was not much better - breathlessness and panic attacks, together with coughing fits, all took their toll. We arrived at Lobuche at 15:10 which had intended to be our lunch stop. Fletcher and I are staying here overnight and he is talking about hiring a helicopter out in the morning - a snip at $5500. He has offered me a place, but I feel like it would be wimping out and it is still not clear whether it would be counted as two flights (and two costs). Mungo suggested that the day I might have difficulty would be the last day from Namchee, but that I should be able to do it if prodded with a big enough stick. I am still waiting to find out what is likely to happen. In fact, Fletcher has chartered a helicopter and is going to be flown down to Katmandu tomorrow and I am going with him - freeloading and copping out.

2007-05-24 Thursday Everest Base Camp altitude 5300m

Night time temperature went down to -12oC. I was coughing massively throughout the night. Also even the slightest exertion brings on massive hyperventilation. The fully inflated mattress made life much better last night. I ended up doing nothing much except TESTING today. I could not complete the second spirometer test and came to a halt slightly early on both bike tests. Only managed 132 watts rather than the 150 the testers (and I) wanted to aim at.

2007-05-23 Wednesday Everest Base Camp altitude 5300m

A lousy night, last night. My mattress was only partially inflated so I was sleeping on rock above ice to an extent. My arrangements for a piss bottle did not work out too well. Ian was up and down and the ambient nosie level was high. The team summitted seven people from the team and 10 Sherpas at around 07:30 this morning. I seem to have some reaction to altitude - the smallest exertion is making me massively breathless and I am very lethargic. It took me 10 minutes to put on one sandal. The day time temperature reached 32oC today.

2007-05-21 Monday Lobuche -> Gorak Shep altitude 5140m

Very hard trek mostly up. The altitude is leading to fatigue problems. We came over the moraine left by the glacier, which is enormous. Met trek group K coming down from base camp as we ascended. Again tonight will be a personal record for sleeping at altitude.

2007-05-22 Tuesday Gorak Shep -> Everest Base Camp altitude 5300m

My throat infection returned, and I had some difficulties in drinking. En route to base camp, I snapped one of my trekking poles, when I slipped. It snapped in two, and considering they are made of titanium, I must have exerted some massive force on it. At base camp I managed to pull the other pole out of its lock, and took about 15 minutes to replace it. I had a brief moment of "That's not the ice fall" as I saw what turned out to be a snow fall, and then saw the ice fall and had the "THAT'S THE ICE FALL (or the 2/3 of it that is visible from base camp)." It is vast, and goes straight up for 750m or more. The glacier is weird. As we got to the base camp, we set up for a group photograph. Mungo (team leader) put his camera gear down on a boulder to come over for the photo. As he moved over, the boulder turned over, deposited his camera gear on the ground, and rolled onto the camera case. Two seconds and £3000 worth of camera gear completely busted - including the metal body of an Olympus professional camera split into two. The glacier's surface melts during the day, and refreezes during the night. As a consequence the surface of the glacier is moving all the time. As a result the tents at base camp have shifted and tilted and it looks a little like a refugee tent city. The manager at the hotel in Katmandu, who expedited the logistics of the expedition, said that they had shifted 25 tons of equipment up the mountain, most of which has ended up at base camp. The Xtreme Everest team are attempting to summit tonight.

2007-05-20 Sunday Periche -> Lobuche altitude 4940m

We started at 07:45 and arrived by 14:00. It was a very hard haul, with the last part of the trek being exacerbated by the lack of oxygen - I was certainly noticing it, and I think many of the group were too. I arrived with an extemely severe headache that lasted four hours; had a sore throat; eustachian tube problems and a dose of earache. I saw the doctor here, and he reckoned I had an ear infection, and prescribed fairly tough antibiotics for it. In many ways the first part of the trek today was like going up to Seathwaite from Seetoller, in the Lake District. It consists of a very flat, very rock strewn wide valley. Obviously it is on a very much larger scale - it is enormous. We are starting to meet people who have summitted. The lodge here (which is well known to the guides and sherpas as a place that extracts the absolute maximum of cash out of its visitors) is absolutely packed with people going up and coming down. One of them is a French woman, who summits solo, who has been moving up at more or less the same time as us, was questioning us about the expedition. She was intrigued up to the point where members of our group described the summit expedition as taking a exercise bike up to the South Col. This she just found silly, and was giggling for much of the evening. Sleeping here was a new altitude record for me.

2007-05-19 Saturday Pherich altitude 4306m

Professor David Howard was taken very ill overnight. He had seemed OK until about 16:00 yesterday, had to be evacuated out by helicopter, with AMS and severe complications. He has been up and down the mountain a few times, and is running the ENT experiments, He had been ascending the mountain more or less with us, and I think the suddenness and the severity of his illness has sobered all the members of our trek. The measurement team evacuated him by stretcher and with oxygen. They had been up all night with David, and so the testing was late in starting and the team were all absolutely shattered.

2007-05-18 Friday Pherich altitude 4306m

Up early taking photos in an absolutely beautiful morning with no cloud. By the time we came to do our diary entries the cloud had drifted in. Feeling really good this morning. The Jagged Globe summitted today. There are approximately 37 teams at base camp and 11 on the other side. Two members of the Korean expedition were killed today, swept away by an altitiude. David Coastes (?), the guy that is running up and down the mountain doing the calibration of all the testing equipment is a friend of the farmer at Grafton Regis - whose lands abut to the canal just above where my permanent mooring is.