As today was a rest day, we didn’t get a wake up call. I woke at 8.55 to hear the last calls for hot porridge, our first decent breakfast (other than dry cornflakes) since leaving basecamp. I moved pretty fast to get my bowl to the guides’ tent and woke my groaning tentmate in the process. He’s decided to sleep top to tail to give us both a little extra room in the tent. It works as long as I don’t have an urgent need to climb over his head to get out.

We had very little to do today, so we filled the morning with crampon training and a walk on the frozen river above camp. To make things extra difficult, we had to put on and take off the crampons wearing our heavy down mittens. This was to recreate potential conditions on summit night where stripping down to our liner gloves, even for a few minutes, could mean risking frostbite on our fingers. If you want to imagine it, putting on the crampons in mitts was a bit like tying your shoelaces wearing oven gloves. I tried to get additional summit practice by taking a piddle while wearing mitts – as the vet quoted in her blog a few days ago “Big mistake. Huge.” I’ve since decided that if I’m not willing to risk frostbite on my fingers, why would I risk frostbite on anything else. So henceforth all peeing will be mitt-free.

We crossed the frozen river on crampons a few hundred metres above camp. During the crossing we found a few bits and pieces of mountain junk, which Packie told us were left behind by previous expeditions over the past forty or fifty years. He described the area as a high altitude mountaineering museum. A few of us mused that we just didn’t want to find any high altitude mountaineers, which lead to a discussion on the movie ‘Alive’: where exactly in the Andes the plan with the rugby team had crashed; how far they had to trek to safety; and who we would eat to survive if it came to that. As a vegetarian, I felt I was at a distinct disadvantage.

My tentmate mislaid his crampon bag on the ice. He’s a big guy. Lots of meat. I think that minor accidents like his (which could prove dangerous in poor conditions), should be more of a driver of who eats whom on the mountain, rather than simply who has more practice eating rare steaks.

Back in camp we ate macaroni and cheese and had a summit talk from the Expedition leader and the Head guide. The plan is to leave for Camp 3 tomorrow with all our gear, get one night’s rest there and immediately head for summit early the next morning. We’re unlikely to sleep at Camp 3 due to the wind and cold, so resting there makes no sense. A carry day to Camp 3 also makes no sense as if the weather turns bad, we might need any or all of our summit gear with us wherever we are. Now the reality of carrying my full kit in one go is getting closer, I wish I had packed more lightly. It’s even pretty annoying to waste spare grams on spare underwear and socks. I  stink regardless and I’m caked in dirt and dust, so clean clothes seem pretty pointless.

There’s some talk about maybe hiring an extra porter to help with the gear. I’ve offered to give him a few kilos if it helps out the rest of the team. At $21 a kilo, I won’t be handing over too much.

In the afternoon we had a surprise visit from a doctor to check our statistics. As the cute female doctor threw her dreadlocks over her shoulder, crawled into my tent, and whispered to me in a thick accent to remove my clothes, something caused my blood pressure to rise. The body can react weirdly at altitude – I better cut down on those rehydration salts.

We’re really coming together as a team over the last few days. The tiredness and altitude headaches have made everyone a little grumpy, but we’re all making an effort to be patient and helpful. Yesterday I filled up two of the girls’ water bottles from the clearest cleanest little spring I could find. It took me half an hour to scoop up enough water for the three of us. Today they offered to repay the favour  but a few stones shifted as they were filling my bottle, so they handed me back a bottle of damp gravel instead. Delicious! Go team!