Rest Day ABC camp ( inspiring words from a new Friend

Thursday May 6th
Rest Day at Camp 2

We awoke at sunrise on the tent which is around 740am. It had snowed all night again so it was nice to have the sun get all the frost melted off the inside of my tent. It was really cold last night.
I didn’t feel that well when we woke up but I did want to get out and move around for the day. We had planned to go for a walk around 10 am maybe for an hour or so just up towards camp 3 (Nawang and me)
I could hear Dave Morgan and Melissa talking in the dining tent so I just stayed in the tent enjoying the morning until I heard them leave for their tents. We were sharing dining tents with them and it just happened that we overlapped one day as they had come down from camp 3 late last night. Dave is a good friend of Jim’s and an accomplished guide in his own right with multiple summits of Everest under his belt and he is guiding (filming for First Ascents (Eddie Bauer) for Melissa who is trying to become the first American woman to summit Everest without oxygen. She had tried last year with the First Accents Dream team but could ONLY summit with Oxygen. She is a very nice (early 30’s) woman and she later came back in the tent to talk to me while she waited on Dave to get ready to come back down to base camp. She was a very nice, compassionate woman and I enjoyed and appreciated her comments. Her occupation is a guide all over the world and she lives in Idaho but guides for RMI. She had heard about my problem and synthesized with me and was a very open and nice and offered some suggestions. Typically people like her are all about themselves and do not think much about us “weekend warriors” up in their territory but I can tell you that she was very nice and very nice looking also. They were heading down to the lower cities to breathe some heavier air and eat some different food because the high camp food is really bland. This really makes you feel bad when she has done this a couple of times and I am sitting there lumbering to make it to camp 3. Anyway you get the picture. All of us need to be humble at times to push us forward and she did this for me.
After I finished a good breakfast of pancakes, oatmeal and bacon, Nawang and I started out on our trek.
It was nice and sunny and we trekked up to the top of the campsites where all the big boys had their sites. Quite impressive and we then continued towards camp 3. After about 40 mins to a good pace walking I needed a drink of water. It was nice and I got a good education from Nawaang about the mountains and where all he had guided. He is a really nice guy and a good guide. We got up after a short bit and I told him that I had had enough. I wanted to get to the base of the Lhotse face but at that time I told myself to conserve energy for tomorrow climb. I felt ok and then we proceeded back down to the camp. Jim was happy that I made it past the upper tents and we would then plan for tomorrow’s run to the top of camp 3.

We returned home and had lunch then I headed to the tent to rest and thin about tomorrow. We had a talk scheduled wit Jim about 6 pm to discuss tomorrow.
When 6 came I talked to Jim about a couple of things. Could/should I stay another night to see if I could recover or just make the decision to come down? Nima stepped in and said let’s not decide tonight but wait until 8 am tomorrow. He really wanted me to go up but he was afraid I would be too weak to come back down and was concerned about my size if they had to get me back down. (I later found this out)
He brought me a good dinner (chicken, Hot dog wieners and boiled rice with butter) and I settled in for the night knowing that I had to make a major decision about tomorrow.
I rolled around for more than hours wrestling with the decision based on the way I felt and the magnitude of my decision. I can tell you it was not easy. I can tell you that the Lhotse face scared me in the condition I was in right then because with the conditions of the mountains one slipped and I could e hurt or even killed. But I also can tell you that I didn’t want to give up. I had never given up under these circumstances and I didn’t want to do it now. SO I can tell you May 6th at ABC was a long night for me to digest.

I finally fell asleep and waited for the 8 am call in the morning