Dispatch 25 – Laundry, Moving Day, and Lunch with the Mexicans

Badia and Mauricio (Mexico) crossing one of the rivers at the base of the route
Badia and Mauricio (Mexico) crossing one of the rivers at the base of the route

Today, I woke up at 4am and tossed and turned as I tried to get back to sleep. The tent platform that I made upon arriving to base camp (a platform on glacial moraine (ice and rock)) had melted and was no longer anything akin to flat. I decided that today was the day to pack up all of my belongings (normally a trivial task, but made more complicated by my solar/electrical setup) and remake my tent platform. After this was done, I did some laundry then headed down to Badia and Mauricio’s camp to have lunch with them. They showed me a video they made about their Annapurna expedition and I was horrified to see that they had barely escaped with their lives in an avalanche in the same place that I had been struck by falling ice in 2010. After lunch, one of the Swiss climbers stopped by and we discussed summit plans. I’m leaning toward making a Camp IV and attempting the summit on the 24th. After lunch, the Spanish returned from a visit to K2 base camp, I hurried to bring my drying laundry inside as snow began to fall yet again, and I spent the remainder of the afternoon reading comfortably in my newly renovated base camp tent.