Camp 1

30th May
Up and on our way by 8:30am after packing up camp. We repeated the same route as the previous day. When we got to our gear stash, we had a snooze in the sun for a couple of hours but then decided that there was a better Camp site further along the ridge so we pushed on further up the ridge with the fuel and food load. The sun had disappeared in the afternoon and the temperature rapidly settled at around -5degC for the rest of the day. We went two hours further along, and dumped 14 days of food and fuel there before returning to our new camp (C2) lower down the ridge… But we were now established on the climbing route! – a good day

31st May
Up and on our way by 9:30am after packing up camp. We headed back up the ridge with the full loads in windy and fogy conditions. It was easy enough and we got to the Camp2 site in about an hour and a half. At this point we had caught up with a Ukrainian climbing team who were about a day ahead of us going up the same route. The weather had been deteriorating and the wind was stronger and the visibility lower – In fact we were now in a low-grade blizzard by my estimation. The Ukrainians had decided to stay put for the day at Camp1. This meant that we would have to dig our own camp platform, which we set about doing. I have to say that Marcus just LOVES to dig the deepest snow camp sites I have ever seen. It took a couple of hours to dig a platform that he liked and it was a meter or more deep with cooking shelves and access trenches etc… quite the effort, but to be sure, no wind was ever going to blow us off the ridge! Anyway, after we had done that, the weather was rather unpleasant and we decided to just sit out the rest of the day and read and eat. Marcus had the evening cooking detail that day.
The wind and snow continued all night and the temperature got down to -15deg.