Move to Camp 2. I don't remember Mitch being this funny.

1/20/10
This was to be a rest day, but the weather was excellent and both Ty and I felt well rested from yesterday's carry. We decided to move to camp 2.
There is a game I play whenever we move camp. It starts with a conviction that the preceding carry was more than half the weight, and thus the move will be easier. This inevitably proves incorrect. As I stand swaying beneath a load that would humble the Grinch I then point out to myself that this will be a one way trip. As well, the overnight acclimation will make moving up there easier than it was during the carry. This all makes perfect sense, of course. It just never turns out to be the case.
I was stopping to breath hard every five minutes or so as we closed in on camp 2. My water was gone. The once magical vistas around me were but visual white noise. I was a drooling lumbering beast incapable of higher thought, a troglodyte in a North Face catalog.
The AAI Group appeared briefly to drop a carry and head back down to camp 1. I waved to them from across the glacier as we built our camp.
Ty boiled up a pot of water for our dinner entrees while I pump filtered four liters of drinking water from a hole the IMG Guides had carved in the glacier with ice axes. We had hot mugs of Lipton Chicken Soup, followed by Teriyaki Turkey for Ty and Chicken with mashed potatoes for me. I forgot to bring a bowl along for the climb, so I have been forced to use my thermal mug for oatmeal and cocoa in the mornings, soup in the evening, whatever else in between. It bothered me at first, but now I have learned to block out the ancillary tastes and just focus on "the big flavor" before me.
By 7:30 we are relaxing in the tent. I hand Ty a headphone from my I-pod and together we listen to an album of standup routines by comedian Mitch Hedberg. At 18,000 feet Mitch Hedberg is especially funny. I make a mental note to listen to the album again at high camp.