Our rest day ended up being a busy day.

At 5 in the morning we were already awake, worried for our friend Bonga, who could not sleep because of a severe tooth ache.  The pain had started yesterday, after the beginning of our descent from Camp 1, and became unbearable.  After we got to Base, we consulted my brother Roque, who is a dentist, via satellite phone.  Because of  the symptoms, after taking anesthetics and anti-inflammatory, Bonga had to go as soon as possible to the nearest dentist, to be properly treated, because he probably needs a root canal in one of his superior teeth.

The cases of tooth ache in the high mountain are rare, because with altitude, the atmospheric pressure diminishes and, since our blood pressure remains the same at the beginning, it is like we were suffering of high blood pressure.  With time, our blood pressure finds an equilibrium with the atmospheric pressure, i. e., it drops a little.  That is one of our organism's resources to adapt to thin air and one of the phases in the process we call acclimatization.  But, unfortunately someone with a tooth problem, like a little swelling, or the simple fact to reach high altitudes, could make this problem worse.  Unfortunately this is what happened to Bonga, who left early today from Base and is going as fast as possible to Katmandu, where he is going to be treated.  He will come back to Everest in a hurry to continue climbing.  We send him our support.

When everything looked calm here at Base, we got a message from the Japanese by radio, saying that the location of Camp 1 had been reached by an avalanche and that one of our three tents had been pushed some 50 meters, along with one of their tents.  Luckily nobody was hurt, but I was upset with myself, because I had the feeling that the place was not safe, but anyway I was convinced by the SPCC personnel that it was a good location for our camp.  

In a way, it is practically impossible to find a safe place to camp above the Ice Fall, between 6,000 and 6,300 meters high.  There are gigantic crevasses everywhere, making the terrain very unstable.  And, so close to Everest and Nuptse hillsides, the risk of avalanches is constant.  Anyway, not using Camp 1 and jumping directly to Camp 2 (6,500m) is what we plan to do now.

Look at today's pictures, the camp we installed in the center of the valley, at 6,050m, totally safe from avalanches.  Notice to the right the hillside of Nuptse, and also a threatening avalanche cone.