Saturday, day #6 - Shigatse to just below Yulong La, 4950m, 60 miles
Lovely sunny but cold day and we head off the 50 miles to Tso La. Mainly flat open road but no organised chain gang today, instead I rode the first three hours with Derek and Russel then had lunch. After lunch supposed to be 12 miles to go, turned out to be 22 miles. I was feeling good and even broke away from the bunch soon after lunch to be the first man over Tra La (4505m), a short and not very steep climb.
Found myself with Russel, Derek, and Heidi working against a headwind, after a while R&D fell behind and I was left with Heidi. We worked really well together but both were getting tired. Finally found the car stopped with most of the group. A discussion ensued about how far was left – estimated ranged from 2 to 7 km, in fact it was more like 15km. The extra 10 miles over what we were expecting was a really big deal when you are as tired as we were.
Heidi and I finally made camp and sat down for a cup of tea. About 20 mins later a very irate Russel came into the tent and made his views clear to team leader Stirling – don’t tell me its 5k when its 15k, I’m knackered and have run out of water. Stirling really is showing how not to be a leader – he has no information about length of rides so takes what the guides say and passes it on to us. I suggest he tell them to measure the distance tomorrow in the truck which goes ahead then phone it through so we can be told an accurate distance at lunch time. He seems to think this is a good idea.
Two days till first sighting of Everest… I’m very excited.
Found myself with Russel, Derek, and Heidi working against a headwind, after a while R&D fell behind and I was left with Heidi. We worked really well together but both were getting tired. Finally found the car stopped with most of the group. A discussion ensued about how far was left – estimated ranged from 2 to 7 km, in fact it was more like 15km. The extra 10 miles over what we were expecting was a really big deal when you are as tired as we were.
Heidi and I finally made camp and sat down for a cup of tea. About 20 mins later a very irate Russel came into the tent and made his views clear to team leader Stirling – don’t tell me its 5k when its 15k, I’m knackered and have run out of water. Stirling really is showing how not to be a leader – he has no information about length of rides so takes what the guides say and passes it on to us. I suggest he tell them to measure the distance tomorrow in the truck which goes ahead then phone it through so we can be told an accurate distance at lunch time. He seems to think this is a good idea.
Two days till first sighting of Everest… I’m very excited.
No comments:
Post a Comment