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Washing

• Rob
• 27 Apr 07, 11:15 AM

One of the major parts of Base Camp routine is washing. Now this isn’t something that happens every day (you might not be surprised at this). So the game goes like this, daily washing of oneself is of the wet wipe variety. But the full body wash has to be timed carefully. You need to find a warm part of the day when you can get hot water. This is tricky as a poor Sherpa go down to the glacier, break the ice, fill a barrel with water and haul it up to the kitchen where it is heated on a Butane stove. Once water is successfully obtained it is down to a little ‘shower tent’ where you poor jugs of the stuff over you as quickly as possible, scrub with a bit of soap and then dry off before a cloud covers the sun and the temperature drops.

We’re all into recycling up here so the remaining water is ideal for washing clothes. This is another reason to be careful of your timings. Clothes washing is easy enough, clothes drying is the challenge. Although in the sun the temperature raises to over 20 degrees somehow every time I have washed my clothes they have frozen solid. This isn’t too much of a tragedy if they are mostly dry, so getting the washing done early is essential. So as long as my frozen solid pants are mostly dry all I do is each night stick them in my sleeping bag with me at night and then hey presto in the morning you have clean, dry and most importantly warm underwear.