Long walk down from ABC back to base camp

Thursday April 29th
Going home to Base camp from Camp 2 (ABC)
I didn’t sleep well last night possibly because I had been in the tent for some 14 hrs and was restless but when the call to get up at 5:15 am I for sure didn’t want to get up. I was warm in my sleeping bag, there was frost on the entire inside of the tent and every time I touched the tent frost would fall down onto my clothes. I am so big my head hits the top all the time so it is like it is snowing in my tent in the mornings when I get up before the sun dries it out. It was -4 degrees Fahrenheit and I did not want to get out of the bag.
I had put my pullover and jacket inside my sleeping bag to keep them warm and dry but as I was putting stuff on the frost was being knocked down on me. It was cold and wet. I finally got my clothes on for my trip and then I had to put everything in my stuff sacks for the clothes that I was leaving at camp 2, stuff that was being left at camp 1 for next week and stuff that was going to base camp which is what I was taking down in my backpack.
I finally had pushed everything outside to Nima and gang for the trip down and headed to the dining tent to get some breakfast, put on my harness and get my crampons. We finally walked out the door at 6:50am for our trip down and it included all 5 of us (Nima, Jim, Naawang, Zhagbu (camp 2 cook), Steve) We all had our crampons on and I realized that I had left my sunglasses in the tent so Nima didn’t have his on so he went back to get them but told us to go on down and he will keep going. I left with Nawang and Zhagbu and Jim waited on Nima. We covered the 7 miles pretty quickly and when we got to camp 1 we dropped the stuff off and Nima told us to keep going.
As I had told you on a previous day, there was 1 nasty vertical ladder in between camp 1 and camp 2. Well when we were going down it I got my crampons and the rope hung up and fell off the ladder. First it was a pretty quick deal. The carabineer (on my harness) attached to the safety rope caught me about the same time that the ground caught my shoulder. This was a wakeup call for me to be careful for the rest of the day to be more careful and also showed me how quick something can happen. It scared me to death. I got right up and tried to get loose of the rope that was attached to my harness and was a little dazed and then Jim yelled at me not to do it as I was standing next to a huge crevasse located right behind me. Well what a way to start the day but all is well. (BTW the shoulder is a little sore today (Friday April 30th) but will be ok)
Then we proceeded to the ICE Fall where I was now dreading those first 2 sets of 3 ladders. It was hard work on the first one and we had a lot of traffic around them which makes it even more complicated with everyone trying to find a place to stand and get up and down efficiently. As far as I can tell in the 3 days I have been in the falls there are no common courtesies. People come down and go up at random rates with little regard for the others. I might be wrong but this is how I have seen it.
While we were working hard, I became very hot and needed to take off a layer of clothing and I told Nawang. He told me we couldn’t do it here as it was too dangerous to stop and we would have to wait. I said ok but I didn’t know that meant 45 mins later. By then I had been overheated for that long and my energy had been sapped. We did finally stop and I drank almost a liter of water. I was smoking with the work but the stressed of those few ladders especially after what had happened to me earlier. After a few mins of changing clothes and drinking we continued on down the ice falls. I was moving steady but quite a bit slower. I was just drained but I knew I wanted to get down. Quite a bit of stuff of changed in the fall since I was there 4 days ago but something that didn’t change was it was steep and slick. The sun was now full on and I couldn’t take enough clothes off so I would have to just gut it out for the next 3 hours.
We continued down and about 30 mins from the exit. We had some tea and a coke delivered into the ice fall. Zhagbu had gone ahead and had some of the guys bring us the drinks. It was perfect timing as I was out of water and needed a drink. We had our break gave them our backpacks and proceeded home and was there in the next 20 mins.
We were tired and wanted something to eat as it was almost 12 pm. We had the done the run in about 5 hours, 1 hour less than what Jim and the Sherpa’s had predicted. For me, it was not a min too early. I was shot and needed to sit down for a while.
When we got to the base camp, we went and sat in the dining tent for lunch and wait for Tracy (our base camp manager) to return from Gorak-shep. She had gone down to use the internet and was back within 30 mins of us arriving. She is nice and a friend of a friend of Jim’s who was looking for the neat trip. We sat around and talk and had lunch and I never left the tent until around 6 pm when all of a sudden I just went down and said I had to go to bed without dinner. Jim made me stay around a little while longer while they ate but I could barley hold my head up. I was tired getting cold and wanted to go to bed.
I did finally get into bed with my hot water bottle and went to sleep very quickly and slept all night. It was nice not to have to wake up for anything.