After some serious elevation gains, we arrived at the Island Peak Base Camp to get ready for our summit attempt.
(Ama Dablam from our lunch spot. A few minutes later, an avalanche rolled down from Ama Dablam all the way to the valley right behind the dirt hill in this picture.)
Not surprisingly, at this point, there is beauty all around us wherever we walked.
The next morning was our rest day before the summit attempt. Our mountain guide Chetam had already gone ahead to fix a new line, a necessary move for our safety. While Chetam was gone, we started practicing to use all of our gears. Island Peak climbing actually uses the same gears as climbing Everest using the main routes. The two climbs are even similar in technical difficulties, well minus the extreme altitude. For this reason, many Everest climbers summit Island Peak to acclimatize before their ascent from the EBC.
While we were still practicing, Chetam is already back from fixing the lines. After working physically at more than 20000 ft for hours and carrying all the weight of the ropes up 2700 ft, the man did not have any look of fatigue on his face. What a miracle I thought. Well, he sure does have the pleasure of putting up with my turtle speed tomorrow.
(Our base camp, home for three days)
(These fat birds are the sacred bird of the region. Because no one is not allowed to kill in the Sagarmatha National Park, these birds are not afraid of anybody. They constantly danced around our campsite searching for easy food.)
After the climbing practice, we got ready for some much-needed lunch. It was nothing short of deliciousness. After eating vegetarian food for two weeks, meat was getting stronger(you could also tell by the topic of our choice, yak steak). TO our surprise, the strong porters brought up some cans of ham and tuna to give us some extra energy. Our cook was a magic worker as well, he turned cans of preservative meat into marvelous lunch and dinner. The bouns, we even got our first taste of fresh fruit in two weeks, apples! (Again thanks to the porters. Apples don’t grow this high up.)