Our day started at around 7 am, we had decided to sleep a little longer as we were still trying to make up for the lack of sleep from the nights before. We were therefore the last team out of the hut and took off with a stomach full of old „toast crackers“, nutella chocolate, butter, marmalade, tea and coffee.
Our original plan of the day was to go up on two peaks, Castor and Pollux. But, as we had decided to “sleep in”, we could only go up on one peak and Castor, the higher one, was our peak of choice. Castor is 4.228 meter high and is a relatively simple peak with snow and ice in somewhat steep slopes. On the top was a somewhat narrow ridge and then there was a long hike down to the next hut. The height increase was around 800 meters and we crossed around 6-8 kilometers from the hut, to the peak and to the second hut. It probably sounds short but in this high altitude it is quite a lot and was just right for our second day in the Alps.
The day went great, it was actually kind of perfect. Me and Maggi were tied together and went quite quickly up the peak and found out that our training had really paid off. The view from the top was great as we could see the challenge of tomorrow and got really excited, and alarmed at the same time. We arrived in the hut at around 16:00 and got our first break in our trip.
After a short break we prepared our gear for the next day, ate our dinner and went to sleep around 21:00 so that we could make an early start in the morning.
I had no problems with my stoma on day two, as I was careful to empty my bag regularly and ate on a regular basis. I had a so-called “astronaut-meal” (elemental diet) which really helped me get extra nutrition between meals (something the guys didn’t have to worry about). I also had to drink a lot more fluid than the guys and I put in a carbohydrate mix into it, to ensure I got enough salts and minerals. It worked great.
In the hut I did get into two “minor” problems. I had to change my stoma plate and found out that I forgot my razor (the one I use to shave of body hair on my belly). One staff member of the hut gave me his razor when I told him about my problem. I actually don’t know what would have happened if I he wouldn’t have helped me as I really needed to change everything… Problem number two was that I changed my plate and bag right before dinner and therefore I had to stand during the entire meal – as I cannot sit right afterwards. People were really surprised and really didn’t understand why on earth I was standing there… I just told them I was special…
[Note: I apologize for the delay. I was busy planning and celebrating my 30 year old birthday last week and therefore didn‘t have time to work on the webpage.]
NICE