I had a terrible nights sleep. I slept for 2 hours and then woke up with a headache. Over the night it got worse. In addition, I felt like I had heart burn. To top off my night, I woke up at midnight and had to take a dump. So I had to get dressed, unzip the tent, cross over site to an outhouse. It was kind of challenging finding my way back to the tent. There are tons of tents out here. Luckily I only made one wrong turn. So I get back to the tent, unzip the tent, climb in, undress, and climb back into my nice warm sleeping bag. Then my sinuses started hurting. Finally I rummaged for my ibuprofen and that seemed to help. In the morning we got the usual bed tea (well no tea, it was misplaced) and then started packing. We had another good breakfast. We waited for most of the other groups and porters to leave. We got moving around 9:30 am. So up the wall we climbed. You read a lot about this section being hard, but I found it fun. We hiked for 7 hours today and gained 2,580 feet and lost 2,030 feet. We topped out at 14,780 feet. A new high altitude record for most people in the group. It was a long day. Everyone had headaches. The pounding is pretty good. When we got to camp, Excedrin was extremely popular. It has caffeine in it which also helps with headaches. Good thing Allen has a giant bottle of this stuff. My headache went away in about an hour. I was lucky. Others had worse headaches that lasted a lot longer. Today we hiked in the moorland zone. Approaching camp we walked through a forest of Senecio and Lobelia plants. It's amazing that these plants can survive in such harsh conditions. They have a form of anti-freeze in their leaves to protect them. The Lobelia actually closes up it's leaves to protect itself when it gets cold. Another great dinner was served. Once again we had leek soup. We also had chicken, veggies, and mashed potatoes. I turned in early tonight. Hope I sleep. |
