Tagne 2001

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Dan's Diary

Day 14 - Wednesday 11th July 2001

Dan's cairn dominates Base Camp

The morning cup of tea was brought round at 7am. It was a cold morning and I didn't want to leave my sleeping bag. By the time I emerged to drink my tea half an hour had passed and my tea was cold. I got up and had a wash and shave. A few rocks bounced noisily down a rock face, coming to rest on the scree slope, yards from our tents. I looked up at the mass of loose rock waiting to come down from the cliffs and at the size of some of the previously fallen rocks and hoped no more came down. The river had gone down a lot overnight and it was now possible to build the dam I had planned.

At 8am we congregated in the mess tent for breakfast. The breakfast was always the same, cereal, eggs in one form or another and rotis. The cereal was either cornflakes or muesli or a mixture of the two. Every day it was different as the proportion of the four main components; cornflakes, oats, dried fruit, and nuts, varied.

By 9am I had started rolling the largest boulders, from the riverbed, into place for the foundation of the dam. An hour later and I had a discontinuous line of rocks across the channel I was trying to dam. It started to spit with rain so I retreated to the shelter of the mess tent where Jon and Steve were reading. Alan and Andy weren't feeling great and had gone to lie down in their tents. The shower soon passed and I went back to building the dam. Half an hour later the next shower had arrived and I was back in the mess tent. With no sign of the rain giving up by 11am I went and got my book from my tent. Jon was busy mopping up water. He had knelt on the tube to his water bottle, which had slipped under his thermarest causing a mini flood in his tent.

At 12pm I returned to dam building. Having built a complete wall across the channel I set about strengthening it by positioning smaller stones both in front and behind the large boulders. Sonam called me over for lunch at 1pm. Chunky meat and vegetable soup, coleslaw pizza and vegetable rice pilau was on offer. An hour later and having eaten more than I should, I was back at the dam. The water had risen and was seeping under the bottom of the dam. Alan came to have a look at my efforts and I managed to encourage him to help me. We set about undertaking phase three and four of the dam project, which was to build two rock groynes upstream of the dam to divert the water away from the dam and to encourage sedimentation. Phase one had been the construction of the dam. Jon joined us and continued with phase two, which was to put fine scree in the gaps between the large boulders. The water continued to rise and before long we were struggling to keep up. We managed to get two lines of large rocks in position, sticking out into the river like groynes. Come 3:45pm the cold water had made my feet go numb. I stopped work and returned to the mess tent where I tried to warm my toes up by rubbing them. By the time I had recovered the river was too high to continue. I watched helplessly as the water rolled over the inadequate groynes as if they were weirs. The dam was holding back a fair bit of water, but water was again flowing over the top at its lowest point. More work would have to be done, but it would have to wait until the morning, I thought.

The expedition mascot tops the cairn

I sat and did a crossword in the mess tent. Steve and Jon were also there reading their books. Andy and Alan joined us for Tea, cake and biscuits at 4:20pm. We discussed what we would do tomorrow. It was decided that Andy, Alan and Steve would go high over the rocky ledges to see if they could get up the Topka Yongma valley that way, and Jon and I would try along the river. We were hoping that in the morning when it was low, we would be able to walk along the side of the riverbed.

I continued with my crosswords while Steve finished reading my book, which he started that morning and Andy built a wall between the tents and the scree slope. This wall served two purposes; to guide Andy to the toilet tent in the middle of the night avoiding guy ropes and to stop any falling rocks from rolling onto our tents. It served the first purpose perfectly but as for the second I wasn't so sure. It would stop the small rocks that fell, but judging by the scree slope these wouldn't even reach Andy's wall. It was the large rocks that rolled to the bottom of the scree slope and beyond and judging by the size of them I'm not sure the wall would have stopped them.

The soup came as usual at 6pm. It was a beige colour. More crosswords filled in the time before tea at 7pm. Rice, mutton curry, salad and a potato and pea vegetable mix was served. I waited for the dhal, but it didn't come. What, no dhal?! We had had it every day since the beginning of the trek. Rice just wasn't the same without it. Andy blamed his loss of appetite on a lack of salt in the cooking. Was it not more likely to be something to do with the vomiting or diarrhoea he had recently suffered from, I thought? He obviously hadn't had any dhal as this was usually very salty, and if he needed more there was a whole tub of salt on the table. I read some more of my book while the others tucked into the fruit salad and drank cups of hot chocolate or tea. I retreated to my sleeping bag at 8:15pm, with cold feet. My sandals still hadn't dried out from the dam building exercise.