Cho Oyu from Chinese Base Camp (15,700′)

After a lot of hurry-up and wait logistics, an interesting and stressful crossing of the border into Tibet/China and an impromptu game of “bocce” along Tingri’s uneven riverbed using semi-round rocks, we finally arrived at Cho Oyu base camp at 15,700′ yesterday.  Today and tomorrow are active rest days, where we’ll do short day hikes to aid the acclimatization process, and then we’ll take two days to push to Cho Oyu’s Advanced Base Camp and start our climb in earnest.  As you can tell from the picture above, the winds up high are significant (which is typical this early in the climbing season), so we’ll hope and wait for better conditions for a summit attempt as we move higher over the next couple of weeks.  If all goes according to plan, we will summit around May 6th.  Fingers crossed.