From Japanese Camp

We spent a few days shuffling around on rocks stacked about like dinner plates in order to visit Makalu Advanced Camp - which lies 1000m above Makalu Basecamp and serves as the actual base for expeditions attempting to summit by the standard route. It is tucked away up a tributary glacier of the Barun at an altitude of about 5700m, and every year an international city of tents grows here during expedition season. I wanted to pay a visit to check out the scene and maybe speak some native English.

We brought a snowstorm up with us, so everyone was hiding in their tent, but the Sherpas invited us into one of the cook tents, and we swapped a few stories, drank some tea, and saw some state of the art high altitude cookware. I then knocked on a few tent flaps and met some pretty cool climbers. That afternoon we returned in the elements to our tents here at Japanesese Camp, an intermediate stopping point along the glacier about two thirds of the way up.

The evening broke up the storm and I was able to wander out into the vast expanse of rocks, freshly painted with the new fallen snow. I loved the way the new snow filled in the shadows beneath Makalu, watching over us, fighting off the last clouds stubbornly clinging to her in the light of the setting sun.