A view from the balcony.

Sunday 5th July My location is Lat 35’43.613N long 76’17.054E ” Google Earth and see “. After a great nights sleep, it was up and away early. Breakfast 4.30am break camp and on the move 6.20am to a beautiful sun filled morning. Breakfast was porridge ,flat bread stuffed with peeled boiled egg, swallowed down with lemon tea. But before i move on, i had the craziest tent experience during the night while obviously deep in a sleep i started hitting my tenant mate Noel , who then in his frantic efforts to defend himself woke me with his whelps of what the F…., on awaking i realised what the hell i was doing and laying back down in my sleeping bag, we both roared in laughter “thankfully”. As we climbed today together i was obviously apologetic and in analysing the incident, i remembered that just before I went to sleep i watched the sopranos ” which Joe hunter loaded onto my iPad” and for anyone that never seen it, well it’s Mafia led and full of violence ” explains my mid night madness”. Leaving Paya 3350mts our over night location was to reach Urdokas 4050mts “meaning the Balcony” with an altitude gain off 700mts. The route took us directly onto the Baltoro glacier with a very undulating moraine made up of large rocks dust dirt forced up with the glacier ice from beneath which is actively slowly moving down the valley. It’s normal within expedition teams that you forge stronger relationships with some more than others, for one reason or another. Our team is made up of nine members for all around the world and myself and Noel seam to be on the same page getting on great on what can be a time tough expedition. While we both walked up the glacier the views of the surrounding mountains were spectacular with a very strong thread of sharp style tooth looks on most. We came to the very famous Trango towers where this huge beautiful protruding rock tower feature stood, out of carractor to its neighbours. The temperatures today roared into the mid 30degs scorchi ng hot and taxing on the energy levels. Long side the glacier we stumbled on the Pakistani army in training and were very welcoming with our presence, the young platoon of solders carrying all carrying ak47s guns and one guy had an RPG rocket launcher allowing us to walk along with them for an hour of so the platoon captain was with great English,inquisitive in our climb of K2. The climb today was 20 Kms but both the tough underfoot and threading of the route we rolled in after 5/6hrs, set up camp perched on the most beautiful balcony overlooking the glacier below and the towering sub 8000mt mountain of Broadpeak standing in its spender. That first view of K2 has still alluded us yet and we suspect tomorrow we with set eyes on the magnificent sight that to now we seen through someone else view. Tonight’s food is sweet corn soup, rice and veg and man I’d kill for some home cooked food. Off to bed now up at 5am for another push forward 2 days till we arrive in k2 base camp where we will have climbed to 5300mts where we deal with the real effects of high altitude. The forecast for the next three days is good ,base camp is cold and snow which will be a huge change. Catch you in a few days time. Love to everyone at home. Jason