Bianca’s perspective- summit attempt

I didn’t write a blog for this day but I will write one now.

So on the 22nd of May was when I attempted to summit (on the 23rd). We left camp 4 at 6:30pm. The climbing started out very hard, but over the years I’ve learnt that it always takes me at least an hour to get in the rhythm and to start feeling better. So I continued on and sure enough I felt better!

It was quite steep but nothing crazyy. We were in a big long queue, probably closer to the front, and it was moving a tad too slow for my pace but it would’ve made me way too tired if I were to pass people. It was windy from the start, but it just continued to pick up.

It really hurt my face, having all the ice and snow blowing fast onto me. But I would just gaslight myself into thinking it was just “a light breeze” and that it was quite pleasant (it was not). I had a really good mindset at this stage and I would repeat positive affirmations like “i am strong, I am brave, I am fear-facing and I can do this!”. I sung random pop songs to myself (i can’t remember), and my breathing was controlled and I truly believed I could do it.

For those that don’t climb (most), when I say I am feeling strong and good, I am climbing at about 5-6 steps a minute (at most). I am resting every few steps where I have 1 leg stepped above the other and I can rest my whole upper body on this leg.

Anyways, the wind kept picking up and it was getting much harder to ignore it. I had previously put goggles on to help with the wind burn on my face and eyes, but they kept getting frosted so I couldn’t see anything and I had to take them off. When this happened, my eyelashes kept freezing and I couldn’t open my eyes. My lovely Sherpa, Dawa Dorjee, would place his thumbs on my eyes to melt the ice on my eyelashes. This was every 20 minutes or so. I would’ve done this myself but the Sherpas didn’t want me taking off my big mittens out of fear of me getting frostbite.

After about 6 or so hours (i think?) we made it to the balcony. By this point it was so ridiculously windy that we couldn’t see almost anything! There was snow blowing in every direction. I wanted to have a rest because I had been telling myself that I would for hours, and it is a famous spot to rest. I had to squat in a ball to stop the snow blowing a a million miles an hour onto my face. Meanwhile the lovely sherpas changed my oxygen bottle, as I had to climb the last 10 minutes without oxygen which was AWFUL but I’m actually proud of myself for doing.

We continued on after a very short rest, and there was now almost no one in front of us. The wind got so much worse now and the snow we were climbing became quite powdery and slippery. There were no steps because the snow would fill them in so fast. I had absolutely no clue what I was climbing on and all around me was just pitch black, with snow and wind blowing everywhere.

My sherpas then stopped to ask me if I wanted to wait and see if the weather changed. But I knew I would get too cold waiting and that the weather wouldn’t change fast enough. So I said no. We continued, climbing much slower than before because of the conditions. After another 30 minutes the weather was… worse again. They the stopped me again and suggested we turn around. I asked them if their hands and toes were cold, they were not too bad and neither were mine. So I said no, and we continued again. After another 30 minutes, my hands and toes went numb and started to tingle which is the first stage of frostbite. The weather was absolutely horrible and it was making it harder and harder to climb (as if Everest isn’t already hard enough 😭). We had dad on the radio and I made the call. I did cry a bit in that moment, when i knew I wouldn’t make it. I still had another 5 hours at least to go, but I felt so close.

I decided to turn around, and cried for the next 30 minutes as we descended. There was almost no one behind us still coming up, as everyone turned around. We continued down down down, using the Sherpa rappel method which is fast and requires minimal work. I was quite tired but so were the Sherpas so we all came down having our own seperate rest breaks. It felt horrible emotionally, having to lose all of the uphill progress I had made.

I got back down to our tent and had just enough energy to take my boots off and I shuffled into my sleeping bag. By now it was 5am and I immediately fell asleep. We had climbed for about 10 hours.