Everest diaries: Johnny Ward takes on 'daunting' final approach to the summit

Galway-born Johnny Ward is documenting his 50-day journey to the top of Everest, the highest mountain peak in the world, weekly on irishexaminer.com.

Johnny Ward is on the last leg of his journey up the highest mountain in the world.

May 10 

So this morning we went on one of our regular hikes from base camp just to keep the blood flowing. We hiked up to Kala Patthar which is about 5700m - a beautiful hike to keep us occupied while waiting for the weather to clear. But of course I got carried away while taking photos and videos up there and I left my hiking pole! So I had to climb all the way back up, five hours later and I eventually made it back to camp. Genius of the year award goes to…..Johnny Ward.

May 11

Rumours about a summit window a week-to-10-days from now got me feeling nervous, excited, ready, scared, motivated. Waiting for news from our Furtenbach Adventures team before we know more. True to form, I tweaked a muscle in my back yesterday too, great timing. Sprinting in the cold last night between the communal tent and my tent, I can’t do an expedition without getting injured - rest, rest, rest until we go, Johnny boy.

May 12 - morning 

It’s time to take on Mount Everest. A lifetime dream, a year of sacrifice, training, saving and visualising.

The actual act is daunting, but the true task was formed the day I committed to this thing. So here I am. Dream big.

Thanks for all the support. All being well, I'll be back in a week.

May 12 - evening

So tonight is the night. All being well, we will try to summit next Wednesday morning, hiking all through Tuesday night. Tonight we take on the Khumbu icefall again. It’s freezing as well, far colder than the last time and the wind is quite strong so the chance of frostbite is a lot higher so we have to take care. 

We’ll leave here around 11pm and hopefully get in to camp one around 7am or 8am tomorrow morning and then collapse in the tent all day, sleep there tomorrow night in camp one and the next day we will walk to camp two. That’s the easiest day, it’ll take a few hours, the altitude is quite high - 6,300m or something like that. Sleep there in camp two, wake up at 4 or 5 and make our way to camp three and that’s when it starts to get tough. 

It’s up something that’s like a sheer ice wall. It'll take about four or five hours and it will be pretty brutal and we’ll then be in camp three - that’s when the marathon really starts. We’ll sleep in camp three that night with oxygen masks and we’ll get up at 4 or 5 again and make our way to camp four which is the final camp. That will take four to six hours and we will be on oxygen the whole time. We will come into that camp around lunchtime, we'll try to sleep but it’s unlikely as it’ll be so cold.

That night we will take on the summit push, we will set off at 9 or so, walk up towards the summit and that’s a scary ridge that you can fall off. We will have oxygen all the way to the summit, and that’s it! Try to remember that’s only halfway, most people who die on Everest do so coming down rather than going up so we will eat and drink something at the summit, take some photos and videos but then we need to get the game face back on and try to come down safely. We will come down to camp four and keep going, not being allowed to rest until we get to camp two as it’s safer. 

On the 18th we will go through the Khumbu icefall again to base camp, let's see what happens with weather etc. Some people helicopter out straight away, some people stay and get drunk and celebrate. As long as I get up and down safely, that’s all that matters.