It never rains but it pours.
The monsoon is still making it’s presence felt. Since we arrived at Samagoan the heavens have been open and the pani (water) has been falling. In the last 2 1/2 days there has been over 200mm of rain. There has been a steady stream of Sherpa’s coming down from basecamp to visit friends and family or to just simply hang out. From what we have been able d to find out it seems that all the other expeditions are still in basecamp and there has been about 1m new snow.
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Camp 1 is most likely a tad buried …. All last night it was simply belting down and the dawn was grey, murky and rainy. After a chat about the porters we felt it better to wait one more day here for the better weather that is forecast for tomorrow. It wouldn’t be good to have one of them slip and injure themselves OR to drop any of our gear + the deep snow into basecamp would also prove to be a problem for them wearing only lite shoes and or walking boots.
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Yesterday however we did get out on an acclimatization walk in the afternoon when the rain had eased. We climbed up the basecamp track to about 4150m and sat in wee cave to watch the clouds come and go – giving us some glimpses of the glacier across from us and the lake far below.
Just this morning we arranged to have a Puja (blessings from the Lama) here in Samagoan as the local Lama was heading down to a lower village for a few days and would not be able to come up to basecamp. We had our boots, axes and my canopy blessed – all done under cover out of the rain in a local prayer room.
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So now we are simply waiting for the promised good weather to come again.