This morning we packed up our tent and put everything we needed for a few nights at camp 2 into our packs. We left much of our gas and food behind, with the plan being for Paul to climb down and get them after a rest day at camp 2. The weather was quite cloudy and it had snowed throughout the night. It was still snowing as we departed at 8am. It took us a full 2 hours to get ready!
The climb to camp 2 was very hard, with some near vertical rock & ice pitches. It took us 12 hours to complete – climbed 800 vertical metres.
As we climbed the weather deteriorated, with the visibility dropping down to 10m at times and the temperature plummeted. Occasionally the clouds would clear a litte – see photo of Fiona climbing.
Both our hands got very cold; our gloves were frozen stiff. We had left our high altitude down gloves at camp 1, mistakenly thinking that they wouldn’t be needed at this altitude. We had also left our hand warmers for the same reason.
We had planned to climb to an intermediary camp below camp 2, but with the poor visibility we never saw it. So we continued climbing until we saw the main camp 2, setup our tent and crawled inside our sleeping bags.
All hands and feet came through the day unscathed, but it could have been pretty bad if we had to continue on for much longer. We plan a rest day tomorrow and then Paul will go down to camp 1 to get the rest of our gear.
Paul and Fiona at camp 2.