Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - Gearing Up for the Climb

Great nights sleep and feeling rested now. It was a good idea to come in a day ahead of everyone else and make sure we got over the jet lag. Doug has caught a cold from someone on the airplane and I am worried about him, for his own sake and for the possibility of transmitting it to the other climbers. I have started taking loads of Emergency and my Coptis Chinesis to make sure I don't get it. Any respiratory distress will make it much more difficult to reach the summit.

We start orientation at 9:15am. It will be a busy day. While waiting Mickey Babcock and her climbing partner Susie Weber and were talking about how to keep our nasal passages moist in the dry climate. Mickey suggested that we might use the pee funnel as a Neti Pot for salt water! We all got a good laugh out of that. Who knew it could be so useful.

Sierra went to the pharmacy - Mona's - and got Doug some medicine. He is resting in his room during the first part of the orientation. Hope he feels better soon.

Nathan Henwood, one of the climbers with PD, has a Spot and will track our progress on the mountain. The website is . Search under Henwood and you can find the trip.

Our lead guide is Eric Murphy. He's been with Alpine for 11 years and done 30 Kili climbs. He has a degree in Fine Arts, lives on Widby Island, WA and also has a winery. Our second guide is Ben Jones. He's been with Alpine 4 years, been a mountain guide for 9 years. He is from Wyoming. He lives in Jackson, WY.

They go over tipping, basics of the trip, leaving no impact, food, snacks, sunscreen, etc. And then we learn about "self care". This is critical on the mountain. Make sure you have proper hydration - about 4 liters a day of water. Pace yourself at a pace that you can essentially walk all day - that means don't blast out of the gate and run out of juice. This is an endurance challenge not a sprint. Eat foods that are easy to digest - the digestive track slows down at high altitude to give more energy to the respiratory system. Eat complex carbs in the evening. Keep covered up with sunscreen and lipscreen. There is a lot of dust, cover your nose to avoid breathing in a lot of dust. Take care of your feet each day. Wash your feet and put on fresh pair of sock each day when you get in to camp after hiking. Treat your hot spots early.

After this run down we go to the hotel buffet for lunch before heading back to the conference room with our gear for the gear check. I didn't realize we were going to have unpack our boundary bags for inspection. I guess they've had too many times where people didn't bring the gear they were told to bring. I find this unsettling because I have everything perfectly packed in airtight bags. We start at 1:15 and it looks to be a long time before John and I get checked. This is my first lesson in patience - there will be many on this trip. Eric finally checks John's gear at 2:45. The whole thing seems rather chaotic. After this we did a lot of standing around while they went through the "med" check since this group is on a lot of meds and the side affects can be similar to AMS ( acute mountain sickness). In retrospect, they should have sent the rest of the folks to get change while this was going on so we would not have to stop on the way to the mountain tomorrow. We also have various interviews with the documentary crew while this is going on. John and I get interviewed as a couple. I hope he doesn't end up on the cutting room floor like he did for the news cast in Iowa - no shaking sometimes gets you on the cutting room floor because nobody thinks you have anything wrong with you.

We finally finished the gear check and repack around 4:30. I felt a lot more comfortable with my packing from home and really wish we hadn't done this. While we were standing around during the med check we got a chance to meet more of the folks who came in the night before. I met Sean, from Portland/Hood River, OR who has MS. He's got a great attitude. His wife left him about a year after he was diagnosed despite the fact that he had stayed with her through cancer and several other "trials". You just never know about a person until the going gets tough. He has a 7 year old daughter. I really enjoyed talking to him.

We really hit it off with Tina from Wisconsin, companion climber for Inez from Spain. She another ball of fire and was our dinner companion at Pepe's. Dinner was altogether another fiasco. Logistically speaking its a bad idea to take 30 people to a restaurant and let them order a la carte off a menu with 50 or more items. Its impossible to do this and get out in any reasonable amount of time. I know this from my 5 years as a waitress over 25 years ago. Seems simple and logical but I guess not. We had two entertainers while we were waiting for our food. They did some dancing, limbo and fire eating. We sat at the end of the table with Tina, Inez and Stephanie. Lori asked if any of us wanted to say something on the evening broadcast. Stephanie said her family would probably not be following her. That really bothered me for her. She didn't seem to mind but I minded for her. She teaches Pilates and is working toward a PHD in PT. Dinner took forever and we became increasingly frustrated. I asked Lori first and then Ben if we could just take a cab back and go to bed but they wouldn't make the call without Eric. He was deep in conversation and every time I went to stand by him to ask he ignored me. I don't like being ignored so that was only increasing my aggravation. Another lesson in patience I guess. At this point I was pretty angry and went back down to the end of the table. I closed my eyes and put my hands together in an attempt to calm myself with "yoga breathe". Tina turned to John and said, "What's see doing? Is she praying?" I opened my eyes and told her I was trying to calm myself down because normally in this situation I would turn in to super bitch and I didn't want to do that in front of this new group of people - trying to show my best behavior.

Finally dinner arrived and it was awful. Inez, Tina and Stephanie had all ordered the fish and it was terrible. I ordered pasta which is hard to ruin so I shared with them because I was beyond being hungry. We finally got back to the hotel for final packing, checkout and valuables storage - another poorly planned activity. John and I checked out just as we walked in the door and got that out of the way quickly. I can's say valuables checkin was the same. I waited at least 40 minutes before giving up and deciding to take all our valuables to the mountain with us. So I basically packed my money belt in the bottom of my backpack since it wouldn't be far from me on the mountain. Another lesson in patience. Wonder how many there are going to be on this trip.

Meanwhile back at the room.......

I was checking my clothes for the next day and couldn't find my long john top for the next day that I was supposed to have in my backpack. I proceeded to unpack and repack my safari bag 3 times and everything in my boundary bag once before giving up. By this time it was 11:30, way past when I wanted to get to bed. I finally climbed in to bed. Just after turning out the light and relaxing I remembered where I put it. It was stuffed in the hood of my orange Patagonia rain jacket. I was so wound up at this point that it took me another 30 minutes to fall asleep.