Day 12 and 13: Dec 25th and 26th Nido De Condores to Colera

Christmas day, we started our day by opening up special Christmas cards that were sent with us from Shelley that we carried all the way to Nido!  It was really nice for us to have something to make it feel like it was actually Christmas.  We spent about 2 hours in the morning melting snow to get us about 2 liters each.  We finally got around to heading up to high camp, Colera, at 19,800 feet.  It was pretty funny just how slow we needed to go.  I felt like we were hardly moving at all but we managed to make it up to Colera which is slightly higher than the regular high camp, Berlin.  It really didn't seem like we went very far at all but it was pretty exciting to be at the final camp!  Once we got there we got the tent set up without to much trouble even though it was a windy day, then we attempted to melt some snow to get us some more water for the next day but couldn't get the stove to work so we were stuck with about a liter each.  It was really cold and we pretty much got into our sleeping bags and hung out in the tent for most of the day after we failed to melt snow.  The plan was to wake up at 5:00 the next day and head for the summit.  That night I was so excited, like the feeling I used to get before playoff games in basketball, felt good to have that feeling again, only had to travel to a foreign country and spend 2 weeks climbing up to new heights to get it... who knew.

On December 26th we got up at 5:30 to go for our first summit attempt.  The book we had recommended between 2 and 5 am, we decided we would go toward the later end because we really didn't have the best gear to keep us warm.  I was mostly concerned with the fact that neither of us had outer gloves.  So we got on our way and walked as the sun came up.  It was pretty quiet as we made our way up, both of us trying to keep breathing and keep ourselves warm, but it was a beautiful sunrise that unfortunately we were way to cold to take any pictures of.  Around 7:00 Chris started talking about his fingers and toes being much to cold.  At first I just passed it off as minor complaining, I was definitely cold too!  Around 7:30, he insisted on us stopping and he said he was unable to warm up his fingers and toes and he was going to go back to the tent.  At this point we were between 6300 and 6400 meters (20,790 and 21,120 feet).  I decided that I would go back with him with the understanding that we would try again the next day.  He reassured me that even if he couldn't go the next day, there would be others heading up that I could go with and he would wait for me to get back to Colera.  We got back to the tent at around 8:15am and both crawled back into our sleeping bags, taking forever to fully warm back up and get some sleep.  About 3 hours later, i woke up from a nap and Chris said he was still pretty chilled.  Throughout the day, we laid there recovering, spent the afternoon melting some snow during the 'warmer' part of the day.  We managed to fill up our water bottles but keeping them from freezing up was an issue, only solved by keeping them in our sleeping bags with us.  Throughout this day, Chris was not feeling good at all and told me multiple times that I was free to go without him the next day if he was unable, he would just wait in the tent.  I was pretty bummed out about going by myself but had resigned myself to the fact that it may be the only way.  That night Chris said he hallucinated, got dizzy, short of breath, and had headaches.  I was also having headaches, but that could have been due to the fact that I had only managed to eat half a poptart, a granola bar, and a quarter of a cold Mountain House dinner that whole day.  Also throughout that night, Chris was convinced he heard a storm come in and that we were going to wake up to snow the next day.  Thank goodness he was wrong!