Another day in basecamp waiting for an improvement in conditions. All night it rained here and most of today. Thankfully it didn’t drop much snow on the mountain overnight but the cloud seems higher now, so it may be loading our route.

I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to hear of multiple summits on Everest day after day, while we continue to twiddle our thumbs and wait. We have to keep reminding ourseves that we are just two small teams of climbers – 5 in the Spanish and 4 in ours. We haven’t the thousands of metres of fixed rope, oxygen, climbing Sherpas or hundreds of climbers, as are on each side of Everest now. And our weather patters are radically different despite being only 150 or so kms away. Patience and perseverance – two necessary virtues of the high altitude mountaineer. But after so long, it wears thin…

The most frustrating thing of all is that we were obliged to sit for several warm days in bc to allow snow conditions to settle after the big storms but now that they have done so, the weather has deteriorated and we cannot climb back up. Grrrrrr!!!

In the meantime we read, update our journals, work on the laptop (when there is enough sunlight to charge the batteries), snooze, and when the clouds part for just a little while, some of us venture onto the rocks for a quick hit of glacier golf.

The forecast (joke) indicates higher (!) humidity on Saturday and Sunday, followed by a general improvement. With that in mind, we are considering commencing our summit push on Sunday with a view to being high on the hill when the weather breaks, but of course it depends on how much snow falls over the weekend.

Shaved today to regain my youth. Lost 10 years, whoohoo! Must be bored…