Day 9- back down to Plaza De Mulas (4300m) aka base camp

Though night. Don’t even want to talk about it. Glad I am alive. It seems like I complain a lot in this blog so I’ll try to be more positive :)…. But this thing is a strong mental game and I feel like our push has been very aggressive. Coming in from 0 sea level altitude I have been kicked in the face every day! We are looking to summit on our 9th or 10th day here and usually the average is 12 days for this mountain. It all depends on weather. Some members of the group that came in from sea level altitude claim they used hypoxic tents at home prior to their trip and it seems it really worked on them! They have no issues whatsoever up here: they laugh, joke around, sing, socialize all while I look at them feeling like shit! Me as an extrovert being basically forced in being an introvert.

We woke up at 8. Packed our gear into plastic bags and left them in one big tent in Camp 2. The guides then disassembled our tents and our heavy rocks on them leaving them flat on the ground. That’s because the wind is so strong up here that your whole tent and gear can fly away in a matter of seconds and then you are done! We actually saw 2 tents from another camp fly away and their stuff was literally thrown by the wind into the nearby glacier! Ouch!

We hiked down from C2 to base camp in about 1.5 hours with a break in between at C1 to take our crampons off as the snow line begins right about C1. Funny how what took us 2 days to walk up took us 1.5 hours to get down.

We got down for lunch and we all just stayed in the dining tent to chill and relax.

Time to go to bed and enjoy 1 or 2 days of rest here. We are all wondering what our summit push looks like!?

When is the day! How will we attack the summit?

PS: It’s tricky to post photos on this blog because the satellite internet here is slow but better than nothing :) and I’ll try my best! Hope you are enjoying this short read and that if you are give this blog a little heart ❤️ like.