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Again we all woke up much brighter today, sleep seems to be a good cure for the side effects of altitude. We had breakfast of pancakes and packed up camp in record time. I am still struggling to be enthusiastic about food but managed a small amount of breakfast.
The first challenge today is "The Wall", a steep incline for which we had to use our hands to scramble up it. Again it was terrifying watching the porters climb this with one hand while they used the other to steady the large weight on their heads, Charles had to help a porter a couple of times whose pack seemed to be particularly precarious. With our hands free and our light day sacks on our backs we all enjoyed this scramble as it was different to the slow pace we had been forced to take up to this point. After an hour of being "rock lobsters" we made it to the top of the wall and were greeted by more amazing views.
We were then back to our slow plod behind Charles along a dusty path with little plant life, eventually plummeting down into a valley to a stream (the last water available to the porters) and then up the other side, "poley, poley" to lunch.
At the lunch stop it was cold and exposed but amazingly the porters had beaten us there and put up our mess tent so we were sheltered and then had the most amazing lunch of chicken and chips! None of us had any idea how the cook had got here in time and then managed to make us a delicious lunch but we were all very grateful.
After our hearty lunch we were all lethargic and walked slowly to base camp. As we ascended visibility became poorer and fog/cloud collected on our hair and cloths. There is no plant life at this level, the landscape is just slate. We felt like we could be on Mars!
Eventually we saw base camp and treated ourselves to a little song. We had sung and chatted less today as last night at our health check Charles suggested we were perhaps talking too much and this might be making our headaches worse. Shocking he would suggest we liked to talk too much!!! He may have a point though as shortly after we sang Matt developed a banging headache.
Another porter became sick today and had to go down the mountain accompanied by a porter. He had a bad back and Charles said he was known to have malaria, although he did not look as unwell as the previous porter it was still worrying that 2 of our team were unwell. Charles says normally porters are very strong and never get sick.
We are all nervous about the challenge tomorrow but very proud of ourselves for getting to base camp. Base camp is cold and exposed to the wind. We had an early dinner and got our bags packed ready for our midnight start. We went to bed early to try and get a few hours sleep before the final assent. As soon as we lay down a terrible wind started up shaking our tents. As Matt said it was like trying to sleep with someone clapping in your face and shaking you. None of us got much sleep.
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