Page 12 - 2017 AMA Winter

EXERCISE AMA60
– a personal perspective of a summit near miss
by Peter Barr
8 Sep 17
This was my first Army exped, after nearly 10 years of trying, and 20 years since I’d first read about military mountaineering in a journal, which in turn got me thinking about joining the Army to be Frank. This was also my the first big exped in a personnel sense - all my previous trips had been as a civilian with at most two civi friends, this exped was on a rather different scale.
9 May 17
Fast forwarding to the arrival to base camp, 5,000m. I’d carried some of the food barrels with Miles around camp but then suddenly felt rough and went to lay down in the tent. I had a 67% pulse oxymeter reading and told our medic Eddy, he reckoned that I should probably miss the planned acclima- tisation walk the next day. Inwardly I could feel an elephant sitting on my emotions. All this time invested, voluntarily away from
family, and this might be it, I may not even get beyond base camp.
10 May 17
The sherpas had their massive packs ready to go but first the puja ceremony had to be completed. They’d rebuilt a stupa cairn and strung out prayer flags across base camp. Alcohol was offered to the spirits and then each of the team was required to throw grain onto the stupa and walk around it three times. The sherpas did the round followed by ten members of the team who then set off up the hill. I was to stay behind that day, helping Miles pack rations. He’d been laid low with the dreaded trots for some time but was now trying to gain strength from western rat packs. I looked at him and said “Well, shall we walk round too?”, wondering if we deserved to, as this height may be the end of our exped - would the mountain spirits see us as unworthy frauds?
11 May 17
The whole team set off for a light load carry and acclimatisation day to Camp 1, 5450m. The heat in the narrow valley was stifling with the occasional glimpse of what we guessed was the summit teasing us on. Imagine a sadist chamber in a gym; the dreadmill, sorry treadmill will consist
of crumbling scree, shifting from side to side, the odd sliding block with polished ice underneath, dry glacier, and the odd snow patch, oh and a 5kW UV/infra red lamp in your face and more than half the atmospheric pressure sucked out the room = fun. After a brief moment of sorting tents and gear we were off back to base camp.
12 May 17
A rest day due with the inclement weather and snowfall that we’d experienced since the our arrival into the valley.
13 May 17
We moved up to Camp 1 with the kit that we’d need all the way to the summit, we wouldn’t return to base camp until the summit dice had been thrown.
14 May 17
Super keenly we did a light load carry up to camp 2, 6100m, dropping loads and helping the sherpas build tent platforms and erect the tents. It had been a while since I’ve spent more than one night on snow...later I wished I’d invested more time in smoothing the platform and carried a second sleeping mat.
Approach to Climbing Base Camp
10 ARMY MOUNTAINEER