Chloe's Diary Extracts and Photos (day 10 - EBC!)

Base Camp Day!!

We woke at 5.15 and set off with butterflies on our stomaches on the very difficult 3 hour schlep to Gorak Shep. Forcing noodle soup and tinned fruit down yourself at 9 in the morning at over 5000m altitude is not easy but we knew we needed the fuel.

Dom put the fear in us by warning if we didn't make the journey to base camp within three and a half hours we would be turned back for our own safety. This put a rocket up us all, especially Rosie who set off at the speed of light.  The walk from Gorak Shep was a steady climb along the glacier valley with the Khombu glacier creating tall waves of ice covered in gravel, like a great lemon meringue pie topping.

We eventually made it (me almost last, but determined) in only an hour and 45 minutes - down the valley side and across the glacier to the strange but stunning area known as base camp by a pile of stones in the middle of the glacier.

An amazing moment, we all congratulated and celebrated together. It is so beautiful - stark, monochrome, cold and yet warm, full of journeys and joy, and glowing with that deep aqua blue of glacial ice that seems to be lit from within.

we wrote on a stone and posed for photos (which had better make it into our internal newspaper, Marie Curie People...), then walked back to Gorak Shep - exhausted and elated. I then collapsed a bit.