Messages from Base camp

Folks,
Another busy day resting…. Which is quite ironic really because it was anything but test.
The day started with a great breakfast of garlic omelette which keeps on giving, just a moment ago I was reminded of it with the compliments from Pete!!!

We took a walk towards the start of the ABC advanced base camp to see if we could  identify a good solid route to camp one, before we had gone 200m we came across snow leopard tracks, which was awesome to see. It had snowed last night until about 01:30 and the tracks were fresh, so Mr Leopard must have been around in the early hours of the morning. Both Pete and I were well chuffed to have seen them so close to camp. Pete has already planned to set up a tin of spam next to his tent to get a closer look tonight- so if it’s just me on the Exped from now on you know why.

We walked about 1km towards K2 base camp and parallel to the start of the climb, amazingly some teams have been here since 9th June and have NOT started fixing the mountain, which excited Pete and I as it would be great training for our HAPs and us in preparation for K2.
So it’s with a huge amount of excitement we will climb to camp 1 tomorrow and take tents and food to stash for future. The process as I’m sure you know is something that we must do several times. 1- it helps with acclimatisation. 2- stashing tents and food over the days and weeks helps later on for ease of carry.
Our plan will be to leave at 03:00 and to cross the glassier whilst it’s nice and cold, then to ABC then to fix up to camp 1, personally I would be amazed if it had not already had some work on the mountain because I would question how you could be here 15/16 days and do nothing, but that’s the word of the strip….

We’ve opened the goodies stash, and started the Tactical coffee whilst preparing the gear so all things are looking well for us.
We hope the snow doesn’t come a day early and hope for fair sky’s tomorrow.