Up at 4.30am for a 7 am start to learn that Charlotte one of our leaders was suffering quite severely from altitude sickness and was to be taken back down to a lower altitude to recover. It was to be a long day as we still had 2 hrs to make up from previous day's events plus today's Trek. Another very tough trek and soon found myself struggling as before. Concern soon arose because of storm clouds gathering at the pass and a few of us agreed to ride horses to speed up progress. It seemed like a good idea but was very scary and my mule had a mind of his own and I got separated from other riders when we stopped to put on warmer clothes to deal with dropping temperature, so I rejoined walkers. Two of our party then collapsed within 10 minutes of each other from exhaustion, and whilst doctors were tending to them it started to hail and get very cold. Because of casualties the group was split into two with faster walkers going on ahead and slower walkers (which incuded me) remaining to follow on with casualties who now needed the horses as heavy cloud descended over us creating a very serious situation. We made our way forward slowly and eventually made it through the pass at 4,600 meters (15,180 ft) where the porters were waiting with hot coca tea which they had made at base camp and run up the mountain with - unbelievable !! We could hardly see each other for a while and then the mist magically cleared revealing a beautiful lake in the valley below. By the time we reached camp we had been trekking for 9.5 hrs (excluding lunch and other stops) we were exhausted and frozen as we went to bed on the coldest night yet.
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