Day 12 - Camp Mulas to Camp 2 Direct

Ok, I am back online and had some time to process what happened over these past couple of days and I suppose it is time to put the pen to paper (or shall I say finger to display?). Right now it's 3 am on Monday January 23rd and we have been on the mountain for 9 days (with today starting our 10th day here). It is a tough wake up call to have my alarm set for 2:30am. The sleep, eat, rest and recover schedules are definitely off the chart - if my body was not used to it by now it would think its some kind of modern day torture. Which, lets be honest, it is in some way because why do people in the 21st set crazy challenges for themselves and seek out suffering? It is the first time for many of us (humanity) that we get to enjoy the fruits of our innovation and yet we choose to suffer. Must be some kind of evolutionary geneticailly encoded desire in us to seek discomfort and suffering, some sort of dopamine reward at the end. A sadistic pleasure. Well there goes my literary maximum and i should probably get back to the point: the point being we meet the group at breakfast at 3am and we all set out to hike from base camp of Plaza De Mulas direct to camp 2. That means we repeat days 7 and 8 in the blog here but instead of splitting them out into 2 days and 2 nights we manage to get up there to C2 around lunch time. Which means we did 1700m vertical meters in around 8 hours and that is not a small feat considering just 3 days back I wouldve passed out trying to do this. Today, I feel great! Finally! I am one of the first in the group to arrive in C2.

Since we arrived around 12pm we are told that our summit push will begin tonight at midnight and that gives us 12 hours to rest. I try to rest in the tent and manage to fall asleep for about 20 minutes. It then gets too hot and unbearable to sleep. Again... the voluntary suffering reminder! Yeah, yeah, yeah i hear you! You are going to say that I am a whimp but NO sorry to inform you that I am the one that chose this and went through all the logistics and financials to be here... so I do know what seeking discomfort means and no I am not one of those lazy princesses that are at home every weekend watching netflix and getting stoned (altough at this very moment I sure wish I was).

Peter my climbing partner and friend gets 0 sleep in! He is notorious for his sleep anxiety and not being able to fall asleep. I am not too far behind him and both of us are jealous of the other group members that seem to fall asleep whenever and wherever they want. How do we know that? we hear snoring and that sure is a sign of deep REM sleep! Oh fucking hell snoring! how much we hate it. Why do humans snore? Did you ever ask yourself this question? Well you should! and dont tell me that lame excuse of how its some nostril blocked passage bullshit breathing airway stuffy full nose sleeping on my back bla bla non sense. Peter and I think its an evolutionary paradigm of where humans had to snore in order for the animals (bears and other predators) to not eat us while we sleep. That doesnt excuse you from snoring! Maybe the tiger didnt eat you but ill punch you next time :D. If you snore I suggest: you dont.

OK anyways.... fast forward 12 hours and midnight is here. No sleep and very little sleep the previous night (since we had to wake up at like 2:30am) + high altitude + poor diet + dehydration + little rest from the days prior.

Hey body! I got an idea! How about we go and try summiting this mountain on Day 10/11 of being here. "Great Idea!" Says the weird and saddistic part of my consiousness while my brain says: "I'm lazy all I care for is fast insta story scrolling dopamine sugar and sex." But the little saddistic angel on my right shoulder prevails and says: "go just go you little bit**." So off we go.