27.4.2009 Camp 3 (7100 m)
Tomi's clean moves on the Lhotse Face
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.........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