When I finally woke up this morning, it was clear that life had gotten easier. The sun was shining hard on my private little Base Camp Eureka!, and the temperature in my -20°F sleeping bag was hitting about +90°. I complained not at all as I blindly reached for the zippers and let in some cool Rongbuk air. I realized with a pleasant start that I'd overslept...nobody was around. For sure they were all stuffing down pancakes and coffee 200 feet away in the dining tent.

This was a fine day to oversleep. I pictured the rest of the team asking each other (between big bites of fried egg) if anybody'd seen me. Was I alright? Should someone fetch me? I knew right away that I was alright. The very fact that I'd 'woken up' meant that I'd actually been asleep. It seemed like a heck of a long time since I'd been asleep enough to need waking.

Human brains want great volumes of oxygen when they sleep. Take away the gas, kiss the sleep goodbye. Yesterday morning, for instance, when daylight rolled around at the North Col, Tap and I were faking sleep the way you do at 23,000'. We were both stretched out eyes closed, with small mountains of insulation covering us, but I think we were both just waiting for the other to get up and get things going. Getting up would have meant shaking some unpleasant frost on each other. It would have meant paying a little attention to the monstrous wind we could hear slapping Changtse and Everest around. It would have meant decision making (I'd feebly offered to head up the North Ridge again that day if the weather got real nice...fat chance). It would have meant the beginning of a lot of work in any direction since we'd be BC bound if we didn't go up.

Waking up would have meant confronting discomfort in its many mountain forms. So we put it off for a long time yesterday, until at least 6am. Then we got moving, albeit slowly. Tap fired up the stove. We felt a tad bit humbled to hear the Sherpas getting their harnesses and spikes on when for us the wind said loud and clear 'go down little boys.' They were going up—like a pro team off to a soccer match. We only had to forget that the field was wildly tilted and the opponent slightly renowned for hooliganism. We were going down.

Slugging down hot drinks and Pop Tarts, we confirmed all this with Eric on the radio. He welcomed us down and said he'd see us at Base Camp. Conrad and Thom had hopped down to ABC the night before, but they offered to wait and make the big down-valley walk with us. The more the merrier we told them.

So we packed up and started sliding down ropes and pounding down snow slopes. At the base of the headwall, we trudged across the hard ice near Andy's find and took our spikes off at the glacier's edge. In our big double boots, we made precious few graceful moves clomping through the loose and rolling moraine rock to ABC. Pemba had some of his patented hot lemon juice and Everest bread sandwiches waiting for us at camp. Conrad and Thom waited patiently as we then repacked and redressed for the long walk home.

The four of us set out then at a healthy clip. We began encountering a virtual United Nations worth of climbers moving toward ABC. There was the Italian-American living in Britain, the Finns, the Swiss, the Mexicans, the Ecuadorians, the Japanese man, the many Sherpas, and finally the Tibetans with their big pointy headed yaks. These last commanded our attention every time. To be polite, one needed to jump off the trail far enough ahead of the oncoming yak trains so as not to spook the fully loaded animals into jumping off route.

This was near enough exercise and excitement for me in one day. I began dreaming of the easy life in BC. Not so for Conrad and Tap however. Conrad had given names to every SUV-sized boulder along the dusty 12 miles. Their walk down included a workout session at each of these big arm-stretching features. Personally, I don't intend to use my biceps again until I hit a big stateside salad bar. It is just too depressing the way arms and chests get whittled away over here. Tap and Conrad kept pulling down on rock though until Thom and I just headed for the barn without them. Didn't make much difference though. They seemed to catch us for the big Base Camp welcome all the same.

So today I woke up a mile lower than the Col and about 10 miles removed from the big discomforter at the head of the valley. It was well after 8am when I got out in the sunshine in my sandals and started the rebuilding process that 'rest days' are about. The first 'breakfasters' were coming out of the tent as I limped in that direction. Man, they were clean! Wearing cotton no less...a spring to their stride. I reached up and scratched my beard and felt the tangles of my hair. When Jake gave me a bright 'good morning!' I spied my ragged self and well lived-in clothing in the clean reflection of his sunglasses. Seemed then that I was seeing one of Bill Mauldin's WWII comic infantrymen...Willie...Joe...Dave—the Everest foot soldier.

I tried then to put a spring in my stride only to discover that a sprung stride just got the limp moved to the other leg. Oh well. I shambled on through a camp full of super-athletes and 25-year-old dynamos who'd been up for hours washing and coffeeing and probably doing push-ups when nobody was looking. I stopped for a coughing fit or two and reflected that I seemed to be the only one actually in need of Base Camp rest. But I was proud of the last few days of mountain climbing and psyched at the prospect of resting hard for the next four days.

In truth, when I'd headed out of Base Camp the last time, it had been with a slight apathy. The summit had seemed too distant, acclimatization too time consuming, my partners too strong...all that stuff. But having finally just gotten up to my neck in the darn thing, having lived at 23,000' 'til it hurt (no time at all), having clawed my way to 25,000' in what we called the 'rugby' wind, and having used up a little bit of health and fitness and brain cells, I was looking at the world a lot differently.

True, my partners are all still too damn strong—so's the mountain for that matter, but now I see it all differently. Now I've been up to those reaches where I can look over international borders. I've seen the spine of the Himalaya stretching out in three big dimensions once again. I spent enough time on this last rotation leaning on my ice axe, digging my spikes into the hill, working my lungs past their limits while my down and Gore-Tex® hood did the 50mph wind-dance against my head with my eyes simply locked on the yellow band of Everest. Staring for endless minutes at the First Step, the Second Step, the Great Couloir, and, oh yeah, the top. Mesmerized, as always, by this mountain (I run the risk of my partners thinking I'm resting at such junctures).

But now I've been close enough again to know how I'll get to these places. The confidence has come back so that despite the ever-present hangover symptoms, despite the limps, despite the lack of sleep and all the rest of it, I'll get the rest I need, get back up as soon as I can, and get higher still. It gets interesting from here on out. Next up is a trip into the holy ground of mountaineering, the stomping ground of George Mallory himself. From those 27,000' reaches I know the last 2000 feet of ice and rock and mystery will be bellowing out their own challenge.

And who knows, if this rotation goes half-well, perhaps I'll have earned another shot at that highest point for the final go-round. Yeah, still weeks away, but now I can feel it all starting to pull me—a good pull, the kind that brings out the best in me...not at all the way I get pulled by beaches and couches and shopping malls.

—Dave Hahn, Climber

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