For the past week, we’ve been waiting for two things: first, for the team cargo to arrive, and second for the weather to clear.

It’s been snowing most days, most nights. On the one hand this means that going for a hike doesn’t entail struggling with loose rock on the glacier. With the snow covering the rocks, it’s much (much) easier to walk not to mention seeing where the trail is.

When the weather allowed, I’d go for walks over the glacier upwards, a few times all the way to the K2 base camp. It’s not much altitude gain, but enough up and down for a light workout.

When the weather wasn’t nice enough to hike, I’d be in my tent reading. I finished Rendezvous with Rama, the latest volume of No Game No Life (my two new books) and Designing Data-Intensive Applications. I’m already nearing the end of the DevOps Handbook too.

Luckily after much delay (causing some tensions) our cargo with food supplies, ropes and other high-altitude equipment has arrived. This means that as soon as the snow on (and around) the route consolidates, our Sherpa squad can set out to fix ropes.

There has been so much snowfall that now that the weather’s improved, there are avalanches going off almost non-stop from the mountains around the glacier. Only two off Broad Peak were big enough that the wind reached camp. They were like 5-minute intense mini-blizzards covering everything in snow.