Wash day

Having spent a day recovering and fattening up again at Base Camp, today, Friday 26th April 2013, has been a bit more domestic.

Although we couldn’t enjoy the luxury of a shower again, due to the lack of availability of liquid fuel for the generator, we could participate in doing some long overdue laundry.

Washing clothes at Base Camp is as rudementary as it gets – all by hand with soap in a basin of water. It is not about getting your whites whiter than white but reducing the amount of dirt held in your clothes and reducing the associated stench before re-use.

I’ve not done an expedition as long as this before but after a three week exped most clothes need two passes through a washing machine to become fresh. I look forward to having access to a washing machine again.

We are continuing to relax and recover at base camp. Last night we watched the DVD Total Recall but more importantly we found the remote for the DVD player so if we so desired then we could watch Kon Tiki again with subtitles.

I finished reading the book “The Social Climbers” this morning. Thanks to Tessa Harris and her co-workers at the SRP for giving it to me as a gift. It was a great read and I highly recommend it to both mountaineers and non-mountaineers. It really portrays some of the hardships of altitude mountaineering and I can relate to many of the things described in the book. Another book worth reading is “The ascent of Rum Doodle” – I read this book when I was in Greenland in 2004 but there are two copies kicking round camp so I hope to get to reread soon.

I have started reading my second book of the trip. It is so nice to get the time to slow down and read. This morning I started reading Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” – this book has been loaned to me from my mum and when I return from this exped we can finally talk about this book. She had given me the book about 2 years ago and I hadn’t yet got around to reading it so better late than never. I am quickly getting into this book and am enjoying it – so much so that I missed lunch because I didn’t realise the time.

There is nothing much else to report from our second rest day at Base Camp. Keep following the adventure and have a good weekend.