Day 6 would see us do our first crampon walking on the glacier, but would otherwise be a day for us to acclimatise at camp 2 at 3,730m. This would be our home until after summit day, which would be another 3 or 4 days potentially depending upon the weather. The accommodation was again in huts, which is at least warmer than tents, and gave us more room to sort out kit etc.

Our aim for today was firstly to collect all of our summit equipment which had been cached the day before at about 3,500m. So after a pretty reasonable sleep, and a nice breakfast of buckwheat (Jo’s favourite food, she loved it, not, closely follow by me and Cormac), and with the sun shining, we walked back down the mountain through a boulder field to where our kit was stored, hoping all the time that it was still there, as without it there would be no possibility of climbing the mountain.

Heading down the boulder field in search of hidden treasures.

Thankfully everyone found everything buried under the rocks just as it had been left, and as it had all been diligently wrapped in drybags/plastic bags it was still dry too. The walk back up to camp only took about an hour, and after lunch we went out to the glacier to make sure everything worked ok, which thankfully it did for all of us.

Everyone getting the hang of their crampons…..

A pretty chilled day all round was had.

We ascended about 300m or so in zig zags up to around 4,000m and everyone found the going pretty easy.

Looking back down the glacier towards our huts, middle left of picture.

And looking back up towards the summit, descending now towards camp.

Following this everyone chilled for the afternoon and had a few games of Mafia (a good game if you don’t know it – look it up!) before dinner and an early night. Tomorrow would be an early start for our acclimatisation walk up to around 4,800m. The weather looked promising for the morning, following which we would then have an entirely free rest day to prepare us for the summit the night after. It was getting more and more exciting by the day now……..