Our Virtual Everest Trek Day Nineteen

Down the Lhotse Face from Camp 3, funny how slopes never seem so steep in a photo! 

Brigantes Everest Expedition Day 19

What a place! A little flattish ledge of snow (probably at about a 30 degree angle, so not that flat!) on the Lhotse Face with steep slopes above and below. We have to be attached to fixed lines all the time to ensure we don’t fall off – it can get pretty gusty up here at 24,500 feet!  We’re glad to rest today. Yesterday was a bit tough – especially for our porters and guides who saved us from disaster innumerable times. We owe them big time! 

So it’s good to chill and reflect. We’ve tried to be out in the sun as much as possible. To be honest the tents are beginning to stink. Too much flesh unwashed for too long and too many layers impregnated with sweat all add up to a pretty toxic mixture. Fresh air is much better, though there isn’t much of it – every movement is an effort up here. But it’s those layers that have kept us going. It can be very, very cold, so you need a lot of them, but then at times it and you get very hot, so a few thick layers don’t work. Lots of thin ones with a good padded over jacket is the answer. How the early climbers dressed in tweeds managed I just don’t know! 

We’re all weary but determined, very short of breath but not of determination. And we’ve only got to climb the height of Ben Nevis to get to the top. We can do that!

Luke N Brightside

Communications Officer

None of us guides and porters has ever been this tired at Camp 3! We had to haul, nurse and sometimes almost carry the Brigantes yesterday.  It’s not only them that need a rest!  And they seem to think the job’s done! Little do they know what the mountain still has in store for them.  

Sherpa Dowting

Head Porter