To paraphrase a certain small pink person who lives in the 100 Acre Wood; 'It's hard to be brave when I feel so very small next to this mountain!'
After 7 days on the trail, we finally reached BC this afternoon. It's difficult to convey our relief at finally reaching the foot of the mountain; if yesterday's excitement was seeing K2 for the first time, then today’s is practically being able to reach out and touch her. It has been a hard week spent getting to this position, yet now it all seems worthwhile.
It took about 5 hours to walk up here today, up the moraine and scree atop of the Godwin Austin Glacier. We walked through Broad Peak BC, and said fairwell to that half of the team (although I'm sure that we'll see them soon), and were able to see some climbers from another expedition on their way up the mountain. I must admit, that from BP BC to K2 BC, I really started to feel the effect of the altitude, and as well as getting a cracking headache, found it very difficult to keep hiking for more than about 10 minutes at a time without needing a break. Having said that, I dragged myself into BC (we are camped right at the top/furthest end of the strip of rock in the glacier), and once my tent was up and I'd popped a couple of paracetamol and had some water, I began to feel much better. We're now at 5100m, which gives us at least 3500m of vertical climbing to the summit. The route is very clear from looking straight out of my tent window - albeit a little steep and demanding, but not quite as vertical as it looked from Concordia - at least now we can see some of the features on it. There is a rumour going around that it might already be fixed to camp 2, which would be amazing if it was, and would severely reduce our workload. There are a few other expeditions here attempting the Cesen (pronounced Chezen), and I'll let you know more as we find it out.

I've started to try and make my tent as homely as possible, putting photographs up, rigging up the solar panels and installing the ipod speakers. This is going to be my home for the next 6.5 weeks, so comfort is the prime objective at the moment. We've got a mess tent, a kitchen tent, a toilet and shower tent and the piece de la resistance - a large Marmot chillout dome tent, which we'll all be able to fit in to chill during the day. Billy, the final goat, who judging by the rather depressed look on his face all day, was aware of his impending doom, met his maker this afternoon, and no doubt we'll be having some delicious goat meat for supper tonight.

Anyway, better go, things to do, people to see - I'll send more reports as the plot thickens...