Miro Caban

How surprised I got in the morning! I felt fine. No pain, I was totally calm and sure to continue higher up. The only concern was my toes. When a chill came I started to feel them immediately and very intensively. Thus again I had to wait for the sun to pop out instead to set off immediately for another 700 vertical meters that were in front of me. As I had a problem to rightly warm up the toes I moved the departure to 7am that morning.

Climbing up went under absolutely perfect physical and psychical conditions. But the pain piercing out from the chilblained toes was worsening with the higher altitude and rising chill. In the middle of the trek I ran into Ghulam who started to cry. He is a tough man thus, dazzled, I asked him what was the reason. He wasn't good in English so he only pointed towards his chest and said: Very bad, and kept shedding tears. We were supposed to build together C3 but instead I told him to go down as there was something wrong with his lungs.

Continuing up I met the whole Korean expedition. They had kept waiting during the bad days for a better weather to come there and to go for the very peak. They were now coming back without reaching it. The wind at C4 was so strong that it blew away one of their tens after another altogether with oxygen bottles and other equipment. I also found out that the expeditions left the idea of cooperating and everybody was going for the peak on his own. It took me 5 and a half hour to reach C2 which showed I was in good condition. The only thing that kept bothering me were my toes which hurt so much that I had to take some painkillers. This was a situation the Belgian doctor also described adding that in such case the curing process may stop or even reverse and the infection may start spreading into the inner of the body. That could have led to amputations of the fingers. Bad outlook but I left the final decision until the next morning.