On approach of the summit, I noticed how strong the wind blew. Henry, our Base Camp manager who was in charge of making sense of the weather reports, mentioned that the expected wind speed would be 0-5 knots. But once we reached the summit, we felt the wind at about 20 knots, perhaps more. This brought with it a very cold wind chill, with temperatures down to -35 degrees Celsius (-95 F.), and we began to feel very cold, indeed. Before long, the saliva that was being collected by our oxygen masks only to then dribble down our thermal face masks, froze said masks to our chins. This was a rather painful circumstance but what really caught us by surprise was the fact that all of our cameras, six altogether, were frozen solid or had drained batteries due to the extreme cold. In light of all this, we decided to spend no more than ten minutes on the summit - we had planned for 30 minutes in order to call loved ones. On our way down, I noticed that the outer corners on the inside of my goggles had frosted up, which impaired my vision. As a result, the decent was a lot more challenging but it also meant that I wasn’t distracted by the sight of steep drops off to our sides, or by the sight of the multiple dead bodies that line the path up and down the mountain. We reached Camp 4 by noon, six hours after reaching the summit. One camp down, three to go ’til Base Camp, I thought to myself. I knew that despite the sheer feeling of exhaustion that overcame me at Camp 4, that I could not let my guard down until we safely reached Base Camp. It turns out that this vigilant approach saved my life. I will write about that tomorrow, but now I am going to enjoy a movie about Ed Hillary that I purchased here, in Kathmandu. I ordered room service in order to enjoy the movie over dinner. Placing the order was quite comical: the operator on the other line read back the order three times and protested that this was a meal for five people. When the trolley arrived, I noticed that it had five sets of cutlery and drinks on it, even though I’ll be enjoying the meal all by myself. After all, I lost 28 pounds in seven weeks and need to regain some energy.