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Xtreme Archive - Prof Montgomery ponders his time on Cho Oyu
It's the middle of September in 2006 and disaster strikes Airfix models as they fall into administration (spoiler alert - they were saved by Hornby) and Helen Mirren was being awarded best actress at the Venice Film Festival for her role in The Queen.
Meanwhile the Xtreme Everest team were on Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world (8201m). The aim of the expedition was to put all the medical equipment through its paces in similar combined cold and altitude circumstances to those that would be encountered in the main expedition in Spring 2007.
Professor Hugh Montgomery, who was part of the expedition, wrote about the lack of sleep, the weather and vomit.
Can I come down now??
By Professor Hugh Montgomery
What a shocking night. Despite the absence of any other symptoms of acute mountain sickness (AMS), I sleep terribly. I am restless, and can?t imagine that I sleep more than 0 or 20 minutes. Poor Mike G (with whom I am sharing a tent) fares worse: he awakes with acid reflux and a headache, and then vomits his gastric contents. He is the paragon of virtue, however, and manages to miss both me and our kit. What a gentleman!
We had planned to be out after sun-up, which proves a wise decision. It is bitterly cold here at 07.00, but by 09.00 we can feel our fingers, and begin our descent.
Meanwhile, the news from camp one is less joyful: Chris VT has had a bad night, confused and unwell, needing oxygen and all the medications in the armoury. The camp is heading down in advance of the storm, and we shall join them at ABC.
The descent is far quicker than the ascent, and we are especially pleased to abseil down some of the steep passages which had taken so long to climb. We make Camp 1 within 2 hours, and stash some kit before continuing to ABC in the (now heavy) snow. All in all, we have made it from C2 to ABC in a little under four and a half hours, but are now exhausted.
We arrive to plentiful food and drink- there is even a glass of red wine! - and the presence of some guides from another group. These (experts, it must be said) place C2 by GPAS at 7200m, rather than 7036m as our barometric altimeters suggest. This certainly fits with our feelings: I was far more breathless there than on the summit of Aconcagua (6997m).
The remaining hours are spent eating and eating more, before a DVD is broken out (?I, Robot?). And so to bed at about 23.00hrs.
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