After countless training hours in the Swiss Alps and an “all-you-can-eat” diet to gain a few extra kilos, we were at last on our way to Nepal at the end of August. Arriving in Kathmandu we met for the first time all the other team members. And two days later our group (13guys and my wife) left the friendly chaos of Kathmandu by bus heading towards Arughat, where we would start our trekking to the basecamp.

Arughat is located at 500mts elevation (7663mts (!) to go for the summit), and as we were still in the Monsoon season it was very hot and very humid. Forget about sleeping with nighttime temperatures of 30°C and over 90% relative humidity. We certainly did not expect that when thinking of an eight-thousand meter peak expedition. After three days in the heat we finally started to gain some height and the climate became more to our liking. And after 7 days of walking we arrived in Sama/Samagoan (3500mts) the last village before the base camp. After a few days of rest, we then climbed up to the BC, located at 4800m, just level with the highest peak in Europe, Mt Blanc. First we had some good weather and could do an acclimatisation trip with two nights spent at camp 1 (5800m).

Back in the BC the weather changed and we had nearly continuous snow or rainfall for 10days. After 5 days we went up to camp 1 to rescue our tents under 1.5m of snow before going down again. Except from that excursion we were very lazy for 10 days, blocked at the BC and doing nothing else than sleep, eat and read, and getting more nervous with each bad weather day.