Today has been spent in the Piuju camp having a rest day. Everything has been pretty chilled out, this morning and most of this afternoon we've had great weather, warm enough to be able to wander around in t-shirts. It's been a good opportunity to wash some of our clothes (and ourselves!), and do general admin , like charging up as many batteries as possible with the solar chargers. We had a big team meeting this morning, discussing climbing strategy on the mountain. This is included a pretty detailed route description from Fabrizio, who's climbed the Cesen (pronounced Chezen) twice to the shoulder. We've got more than 4,000m of rope and lots of gear to fix the route ourselves, although hopefully some of the other teams on the mountain who might be on the same route will contribute. Late this afternoon it started to rain and has only just stopped now as I write (9pm). Rain here is annoying, but it means that there is likely to be a fair amount of snow further up the valley, which might well impede our progress in just getting to BC. The next few days might prove to be very interesting!

I forgot to say, but yesterday I was nominated assistant leader by Fabrizio, as our team doesn't have one. I suspect that the honour of this position might be a slightly dubious one, and a double edged sword at least - assistant leader aka chief bitch! An appropriate position for the youngest member of the team!

So now the clouds are clearing, the snow covered surrounding peaks are slowly melting into the blackness and we are all retiring to the warmth of our sleeping bags. However, it's Thursday, and the porters are all having a big party, lots of singing and banging of pots - in fact Fabrizio has just asked me to go and tell them all to be quiet, as he wants his beauty sleep!

Fabrizio words of wisdom for the day:
(Tonight at supper we were discussing 'going commando', as one of the members of the team hasn't worn underwear for over 25 years! This naturally led into a very funning conversation, which got quite heated, about keeping clean on the mountain and someone implied that making sure that they had a clean pair of boxers every day was the most important thing on the mountain to which Fab replied something along the lines of:)
''We're climbing f***ing K2. I think that we've got more important things to think about than washing our lychee smugglers. If I see any washing lines strung from your tents at camp 2 with your socks and underpants hanging out, or rinsing your boxers in your mugs, then there's going to be serious trouble!''