Page 14 - 2017 AMA Winter

Local interaction
I was somewhat alarmed as; a) they’d be thrusting at high speed and I worried (as the least fit person on the exped) that I wouldn’t be able to keep up, b) Duncan, the groups AML, had the tactic of near running for x distance then panting, then running again - my tactic when I’d been high before was super slow and steady, one breath per step and aiming for maximum blood oxygen saturation, as altitude and its potentially dire effects on the body is terrifying. We roped up, had a discussion and set off after the sherpas.
Duncan went for the tactic of ten steps and then breathe HARD. The sherpas seemed to be operating on a similar tactic, but going further and stopping longer as they broke trail. When it came to trail breaking, Duncan was still going deeper with each step than the sherpas with his heavier frame but giant feet, then I was going to half calf depth with my midget feet and probably the same weight, damn that localised heavy gravity. The hours passed and Al seemed to be gaining on us when he radioed in the late morning to say that his group (and ours) was only gaining 100m altitude per hour, and he was turning round.
Trek refreshments
Kathmandu Airport greeting
We carried on until c.1400 and 7,022m where a debate took place. We could see that two of the sherpas were about to summit. Two of our group had been slow with combined recurrent gastric problems and altitude, whilst a third had mentioned his vision etc was narrowing (it later turned out that he was on the spectrum between AMS and HACE and had taken Dexameth- asone - understatement eh!?). Duncan and I briefly contemplated pressing on, possibly leaving the three on the slope, conditions were fine, we had GPS waypoints if it clagged in or it turned dark in decent - this wasn’t summit fever, this was an acknowledgement that five weeks had been invested in this enterprise, five weeks away as our children grew and missed us, it would be mightily gauling to turn around before becoming conquistadors of that bit of useless snow just above. Duncan and I knew from the beginning that we couldn’t really separate from them, even if our selfish egos tried to stoke reason into us as to why we could. So we turned from uphill to downhill.
Bugger. Within the first 20 mins or so of the decent I started to feel nauseous and asked for a couple of moments. As I’d felt
fine on the way up I think it was psycho- somatic, feeling the kick in the danglees. I recovered in about half an hour but then another member of the party slowed right down. We reached Camp 2 at around 1700. The dull flat light reflected my mood but the guys at camp came out with brews to meet us, it’s amazing how a bit of human kindness can suddenly transform your day, even your exped, I certainly appreciated the effort the guys had went to in making a brew at that height.
19 May 17 – Decent from Camp 2 to Base camp
We packed up the tents and gear, and reformed into our original rope parties. Off we trundled down to Camp 1, putting the rope away for the last time as we came off of the snow slope. With the bond of the rope broken, we packed more gear and bimbled down the scorchio dreadmill to basecamp. Tenzing, our Sirdar, was happy to see us as ever, and what did we have for dinner that night, well pizza overload for all, even for Tom - winner! Maybe AMA trips aren’t so bad after all. I’m glad that I picked up that journal 20 years ago. Con- quistadors of the useless assemble!
12 ARMY MOUNTAINEER
Trying a porter load
Thanks...
I’d just like to personally thank all those who worked extremely hard to realise the exped.
Countless people worked super hard, Col Paul and Al Mason stand out as living and sleeping the exped from conception to fulfilment and beyond.
And thank you to Jonesy for putting up with me in a tent for five weeks.
Thank you all.