Today is a rest day for my half of the team. Fabrizio has headed back up the hill to keep fixing as much of the route as possible, and a couple of the guys are going to spend the night at camp 1 to acclimatise. The sun is out, and it's all very chilled for us at the moment. We've been playing cards all morning and this afternoon I might contemplate having a wash and trying to wash some clothes. We are hoping to squeeze one more day of good weather tomorrow, and if do, we'll try and climb as far up the route as possible and then sleep at camp 1 on the way down. Apparently a storm cycle is coming in, which might mean that we won't get on the route for 5-7 days, so it would be good to get as much done as possible before then.

Basecamp is very quiet - the are only 4 teams here at the moment, and two of those are very small - 2-4 climbers. A large Japanese team arrived a few days ago, and with an average age of about 106, we've nicknamed them the Japanese Saga team! For a time we were worried about which route they were going to be on - because (and no offence) we didn't really want them on ours. We been trying to think up some good ways of trying to persuade them not to climb on the Cezen - ideas ranged from putting a sign at the bottom proclaiming - 'Cezen, closed for redecoration', to all of us dropping through and cordoning off the bottom of the route with poo (the Japanese are notoriously hygienic!). To that end, I have composed a Haiku...
Turds at base of route,
No Japanese smear campaign,
Only us on climb.
(Apologies to my GCSE English teacher!)
Luckily, they seem to have naturally chosen the Abruzzi... And best of luck to them all!

There is a Swiss team who are camped much further down the strip and are on Broad Peak at the moment, and are looking to coming over when they've finished there, and apparently there is a small (1 climber!) American team who are supposedly on their way up to BC at the moment.

The lack of teams makes for a very different feel in BC compared to other trips such as Denali, Aconcagua or Everest, but it is a welcome change - and means that we can concentrate more on the task at hand, rather than having to battle against thousands of others trying to climb the same route.