After being woken at 6:00am with hot tea, we had breakfast and packed our daypacks ready for the day ahead. The sun was shining strong, and we were well above the clouds now, but it was definitely getting cooler and layers were the thought of the day. Today we’d be heading up to our base camp, formally known as Barafu Camp, sitting at 4673m.

This day was so much better than the previous one! It was more like day 3 and I started to enjoy the day. Slow (pole pole) and steady was the theme of the day, and we arrived at camp by early afternoon. We were immediately fed and then sent to our tents to rest and sleep if we could, as today was the day before our summit push!

We were woken at 5:00pm for dinner, and then sent back to our tents to try and sleep again. I do think that my years of working shifts and sleeping at unusual times paid off here, as most of the group couldn’t sleep but I did manage to grab around 4 hours, which as you probably know, is a normal nights sleep for me!

We woke at 11:15pm to the sounds of another group getting ready to set off. We had tea and some biscuits (digestives taste amazing at 4673m!) and packed snacks in our daypacks ready for heading out into the night darkness!