Oringally posted at Ten Fingers 6 Strings. Slight edits included.

———–

It was about two or three A.M. and I was violently shivering at Interim Camp in what was supposed to be a 20-below North Face sleeping bag, but instead was a synthetic cover stuffed with feathers.  It seems that the gear shop in Kathmandu rented us the equivalent of the “Rolax” watches you can pick up in Hong Kong on the street.  The “Rolax” might make you late for a meeting, but the feather sleeping bag at 19,000 feet will literally turn you into a popsicle.  I mumbled audible obscenities while trying to find ways to stay warm wearing top and bottom thermals, a down jacket, down pants and two pairs of wool socks.  I looked ridiculous and it was the first time in my life I really felt claustrophobic.

No matter what I tried, I could not keep my feet warm and eventually had to take off the second pair of socks because they were cutting off my circulation.  So, every 1/2 hour or so, I’d have to rub my feet for ten-minutes, stomp up and down and then practice my tap-dancing skills to keep the blood flowing.  My bones were cold and as I was doing my tap dancing, I wrote a song called Eff You Sleeping Bag Man:

Eff you sleeping bag man
Eff you sleeping bag man
Eff you sleeping bag man
Eff you sleeping bag man (repeat)

The sincerity in my heart and the sweet harmonies produced by this song kept my heart, but not my body warm during this tribulation.  But it wasn’t until the sun broke through the night sky that I knew I would be able to keep all my toes (although the milky, white-color they reflected didn’t make me feel all that comfortable either).  A very inauspicious start to the most important day of the entire trip to Mount Everest: the push to Advanced Base Camp (6,400 meters).

(more…)