Moving up, Day Eleven

We were very fortunate in our timing because yesterdays rest day fell on bad weather. We woke up to high winds, clouds and eight inches of fresh snow. We rested comfortably in our tent all day!

Today, we packed the remainder of our gear and moved up to camp 2 at 19,000 feet. Again, the climb went smoothly. In order to minimize the overall time we would spend at these higher altitudes, we would immediately do a traverse the following day to our high camp at 19,500 feet on the North side of the mountain. This would put us near the Standard Route. We would attempt the summit, and then be able to exit the mountain in only two days, via the Standard Route. The advantage of this traverse was that we would be able to make a quick exit in case of real bad weather or an emergency. And by saving one day in our descent, we would have an extra summit day if needed. The elevation gain during this traverse was only 500 feet.  The difficulty was that we would carry all our gear with us in one move instead of two. We carried 60 to 70 lbs. packs each, with little acclimatizing at 19,500 feet.