Day 21  - 5/8/03  - Tues

Having spend the night in the shadow of a colossal rock face we move slowly further up the mountain. Its a short today only taking 4 hours, by the end of the day at arrow camp (base camp for the summit attempt - 5000m) I've got a slight headache and I'm feeling the cold. outside. We see the first other people since being on the mountain as we approach the camp. Cliff decided yesterday that I wouldn't be a good leader for the summit day because I don't shout at people, which given his experience and my not liking to shout a t people I have to agree with. So I'm safety instead, but Cliff doesn't like my suggestions for safety related signals either, he didn't seem to think I was taking it seriously... My story is that I was trying to inject a little humour to the climb, now were all tired and grumpy.. My suggestions are as follows

Lose under foot arhhh
Slippy Ohhh
Make sure your breathing deeply "Luke I am your father"
Make sure your drinking enough Slurp!
Icy under foot Ice  eeee!

Which given that he wanted me to warn people that when crossing a small stream it would be wet under foot is rather sensible I thought!!

Enough of my complaints, we nap for a few hours, have tea at 7 pm and straight to bed.