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27.4.2009 Camp 3 (7100 m)

Tomi's clean moves on the Lhotse Face
View from camp 3.

.........we put on the climbing shoes, filled our backbags with camp3 tents, stoves, gas and food bags made by Esa and started our trek towards the bottom of Lhotse Face. The sun didn't shine yet so all (Juha, Tomi, Allu) had their fingers feeling the intense cold. In the face itself, 200-300m above us, were hanging couple of dozen of sherpas that were already jumaring up to camp3 to set up tents for their clients. The first to start jumaring was Tomi who started ascending with powerful moves. Without a delay me and Juha followed and soon we noticed that we had ascended already 100m, we were moving well.The wind was biting cold for a while but when the sun gave it's first warming rays the jumaring started to feel, well, acceptable. After around four hours and 500m higher we arrived at the first sites for tents. Here and there you could see broken tent poles, ropes, oxygen bottles, snow pickets etc. We had arrived at the site of camp3 at the height of approximately 7100m. We continued maybe 50 meters up and noticed that the good tent sites were more or less reserved. We decided to continue up the next serac to following level area. Maybe 30m to the right we saw a small snowy area covered by a small serac. We went there and noticed the place to be otherwise good but slightly airy. Juha took the shovel and Tomi and me the tents from our backbags and started to dig a level area for the tent. After two hours of work we had the tent up and anchored solidly with ice screws, snow pickets and snow parachutes. We threw the food, stoves and gas into the tent, had a sip of hot dexal drink (that tasted wonderful in the cold and windy wall), coughed few times and were satisfied with the result, very good! It was the time to start to descend back to camp2. After figure eight was attached to the rope the speedy decending started. Each anchor was checked before the climber's weight was allowed on it. In a bit less than an hour and a half we arrived in our tents and just in time. The wind was picking up and while sitting in the comfort of the tents we listened when the train of wind arrived and shook the tents, again and again. The wind was howling through the whole night........

 

All is well.

 

Greetings to families, friends, lovers and loved ones