Well today, we felt strong and the weather was again just right. So as planned, we skipped our rest day and carried our gear up to camp 2. We climbed the 3,000 feet in under four hours, a very good time.  I had to fight off a headache however that started about one hour into the climb. I took two Tylenol and it slowly went away when we arrived at camp 2. I had been very attentive with how my body was adapting to the altitude during the ascent: I wasn’t having any difficulty with the physical effort.  It was more my head reacting to the lighter oxygen levels. When I started feeling light headed, I would increase my pressure breathing to ensure that my head got enough of the O2's. But then my body would also be getting more oxygen and I would tend to increase my climbing pace. I had to concentrate to not climb faster or the extra effort would cause my headache to come back.  It seemed like a delicate balance between the pressure breathing, the physical effort and the oncoming headaches.

We dumped our packs at camp 2, rested for 15 minutes, and descended back to camp 1 in a about 40 minutes. We were really moving, actually skiing down the gravel slopes in our boots. We ate a great big pasta dinner, drank a lot of fluids and packed it in early that evening. It started snowing that night.