Day 6 (Feb 6)

We got to sleep in today...until 7.  After tea, packing, and breakfast, we ended up leaving camp at 8:30. We immediately began to start walking up a steep slope and continued on that path for about an hour and a half or so.  A gradual but steep path all the way up to a plateau where we took a short break.  After that we continued for another 30 minutes on a relatively flat stretch...still going up, but not very steep.  The landscape is getting really barren up here.  Lots of broken rock, shale, scree, and just tundra looking ground.  Barren but beautiful.  It actually looks just like what I thought a volcano would look like.  During our flatish 30 minutes of walking, I looked to the right and in the distance I could see tiny figures walking in the opposite direction.  The guide told me that those were the people that climbed to the summit this morning and are now heading to their camp for the night further down the mountain.  Pretty cool.  Our last hour of hiking was up a steep slope to the summit camp.  The weather started to turn at the beginning of the camp (which is humongous) and we still had some climbing and walking to do to get to our tent site so we were trying to move a little quicker.  Unfortunately our progress was being halted by these shmucks who were stopping every 10 feet to film each other and talk in some psycho babble.  I'm all for filming and preserving memories...but step off the damn path to do it!  The only way up was one narrow path and we couldn't get by these guys.  I was getting very annoyed and wasn't alone.  Finally we just brushed past them, half on the path and half on some loose slippery rocks.  Anyway, we got past them and continued to our camp and got there about 10 minutes before it started to hail/sleet yet again.  This campsite is huge because it has virtually every route camping here before the summit climb tonight.  It looks like there's going to be a lot of people going up tonight.

The next 5 hours consisted of lunch, nap, tea, nap, and then going to dinner.  After dinner, we got our summit briefing.  Our lead guide, Florence, led the briefing as usual.  But we also had our three assistant guides, Shabban, Crossman, and Jonas; as well as Joseph who would be the helping porter that goes up with us. They talked about when we would be woken up (11:00), what we'd eat (porridge), how to dress (warm as hell), when we'd leave (midnight), and other tidbits of information that would help us (such as: walk slowly, keep a positive mental attitude, very short and very few breaks to keep from freezing, tip over water bottles so it freezes at the bottom instead of top, and a couple other things.  A lot of pep talking really.  I am ridiculously pumped at this point.  I feel great and am so excited to get to the top (and hopefully not need Diamox or oxygen, which would be an awesome feat on top of just reaching the top at all).

Unfortunately I have some bad news to report tonight.  Erik's ear has been bugging him a bit for a day or so but it really started bothering him after the briefing when he tried to lay down to take a nap.  We talked about it and then he went to Florence, the lead guide, and talked to him about it, and he made the very difficult decision to descend the mountain.  It was the right decision...you should never take a chance with a head injury of any sorts, especially at this extreme altitude.  I think he has a ruptured ear drum but it's just a guess. (Now I can officially say that it was indeed a ruptured ear drum).  What we do know is that it won't get better up here and will almost certainly get worse if he went higher. So he hit his ceremonial and meaningful golf balls off into the valley below our campsite and headed down the mountain with a porter and one of the assistant guides.  He has about 6 hours of walking to do, in the dark, to get down the mountain to the gate where an ambulance will bring him to a hospital.  (He had quite an interesting day and half after this but he is doing fine).  It was a very difficult thing to watch him make the decision to leave and even harder to watch him go.  After all we've done up here, I had to fight back a couple tears for him.  I am however, extremely proud of him for realizing what really matters, and that's his health and safety.  I told him I'll make it up and he'll be there in spirit.  The worst part is that besides the ear, he also felt great and wasn't on any Diamox or anything.  So I'm going to try to get some sleep before we head out but it will be tough.  I'm pretty bummed and my thoughts are running.  We shall see...