Today, I woke up around 6:30am despite my intent to sleep in until 8:30am. I headed down to the kitchen tent where Akbar informed me that all of the equipment from the horse that had fallen into the river had arrived after being recovered by Manzoor. After eating breakfast, I spent the morning playing cards with the Spanish K2 and Gasherbrum Expeditions. In the afternoon, Ryan Kushner’s expedition arrived to Paiju and we enjoyed lunch and dinner together. We also were paid a visit by most of the liaison officers present in Paiju. They just wanted to socialize. One of Ryan’s expedition members had drunk from one of the water spigots in Jhula (which are fed from streams up the mountain and are far from safe) without treating the water and suffered the consequences today. I’m not sure if he will be able to recover in time to complete the expedition. I plan on getting up at 4:30am, packing up, then eating breakfast at 5:00am and beginning the longest day of the trek to base camp in the cool hours of the morning. Akbar arranged to have a number of our porters depart at 1am so that they could claim a spot for us in Urdukas. Because of the holiday before we departed Skardu, the military cleared all of the climbers from the previous three days at the same time, resulting in an abnormally large number of climbers on the same trekking schedule. It has been a struggle to find places in the camps to put the kitchen tent and personal tents, but Akbar has managed surprisingly well.