Rest BC
6th May Today was a really settled day at base camp. Josh,Max,Stephen and myself did a bit of exercise. We did a liitle curcuit for 40mins which was good as it broke the day up but also opened my lungs up. It feels like your constantly becoming congested and a bit of a blow out cleared the lungs. We are all beginning to discuss all the different permutations that could happen over the next few weeks. The weather has been pretty bad so far.A metre of snow has fallen at the North col over the last few days. Yersterday, our Sherpas were up at 8200m loading the camp. Nuro is one of our top sherpas. He has summitted 9 times and moves like a machine. He went from the North col up to 8200m, dropped his load then all the way back down the ABC. This is an epic day. He came back down to base camp today for a couple of days rest before we hopefully go up for our summit attempt. The weather looks like it could allow us an attempt on the 17th or 18th. We are waiting for a detailed forecast. The main concern is the wind speeds. At the moment the snow has stopped and the winds have increased which is good to clear the snow from the ridge but does lower the temperatures dramatically.Lets hope it works out and we get a long enough window to get up there. I ordered an extra bottle of oxygen, giving me options slighlty lower down the mountain. It will also allow me to sleep at 7800m on oxygen. I`m hoping this will allow me torest far better at this height. Since we`ve had 4 people leave there is a number of cylinders of oxygen now available for team members to buy. Most people have now got the set up I pre-ordered and will be starting on oxygen at 7500m. My personal thoughts are that having the extra both conserves your energy and allows you to rest better at 7800m. I am begining to really focus on the summit bid now. Hopefully another few days here and we will be away.

Base camp
7th May Today was a nothing day. I did a bit of washing, read my book and snoozed. The days seem to pass quickly considering how little we do. Everybody seems to occupy themselves and we sit and talk a lot. The weather is now one of the hot topics. We could be setting off from base camp on the 13th. This would mean us going for the summit on the 17th or 18th. The forecast is not yet detailed enough. All the teams have roughly the same information and are working towards this time frame. Lets hope it`s not to busy up there.

Base camp
8th May Woke up not feeling to well today. Got a bit of a cough and feel a little bit tired. Rather than fight it I have took it real easy today. The weather down at base camp is quite warm. The wind wips up in the afternoon but it`s still quite mild. Once the sun goes down the temperature drops off dramatically. Some of us have been organising the evening meals over the last few nights. We have managed to use similar ingrediants but serve them up in a more Western style. The cook is a great guy but for example the veg for the evening meal served at 7.30, will be boiling away at 5.30pm. You can imagine what they taste like after that length of time. We think he is happy for us to be involved and hoefully he will pick up a few different ways of doing things. The meat isn`t the best of quality but we`ve done a few different things with it and people seem to be getting more food down them than before. Some of the Sherpas have stayed up at ABC but for the ones that have come down it`s relaxing time. They say on an Everest exped like this they do around 15 days of really hard work, load carrying to the high camps. Talking with them, they don`t class summit day as one of those 15 days. Compared to carrying a load of 35kg plus upto 8300m, the summit day is not strenuous. I sometimes wonder what they must think of us Westeners, the way we struggle to coupe with the altitude and demand what to them must be a standard of comfort way above there expectations. They perform these feets of phsyical endurance on a fraction of the food we consume. There genetic make up allows them to perform at altitude far better than we could ever. We could stay here for months and months and still be no where near them.