According
to the weather-report we have been close to the
center of the jet stream, which came down quite low
this Spring. In BC (4750 m.) we could here the
hauling of the storm on the summit of Manaslu for
days. The very lowered atmospheric pressure brought
a lot of humidity, which caused a severe snowfall on
the mountain and in BC. Really a lot of snow.
During the night we had a
snow shuffling patrol, changing shift every 1.5
hour, to avoid collapsing of the tents, especially
the dining tent. One of us could not go to the
toilet tent due to the strong wind. We have tried
many times to melt the ice cover from the solar panels
during the day but last night the batteries were not
recharged so we had no electric light in the dining
tent.
You get tired after five
days of bad weather and continuous snow shuffling.
But our two Sherpa's and Qudrat Ali ascend to Camp 1
during a few hours of improved weather to check our
tents. You could still see only a few inches of
three tents, the other were completely covered by a
meter of snow. The tents still usable stayed in camp
1, the broken ones (many broken poles and damaged
covers) were carried to BC for repair this morning.
This morning the weather was
nice again, though some high clouds. We hope it will
stay like this because we plan to go up to Camp 1,
if the sun keeps shining and the snow cover
stabilizes. We are anxious about the snow-shuffling
work waiting for us up there. For today we say
goodbye with best regards from BC, the expedition
team and the AMICAL office team.
