08:21: Finally slept much better last night and woke up naturally around 06:30 feeling pretty good and stoked to put in a little bit of a harder day today. Had a light breakfast (1 stroop + maurten bar) and bicarb and coffee (and 100mg MEG).
Used the approach to the glacier as a warmup ~40’ and then stopped there and put my crampons on and took a gel (160) and got ready. Plan was to do 4’ moderate/hard, 1’ easy all the way to the summit. Started out mimicking strides by doing 10’ of 30/90s to start up the glacier and then got into the 4’ reps after that. This ended up going very well. I was moving well, under 5’00/KSch for most of the way up to high camp (41’ from the glacier, 1h21 from Khare).
From there, kept the pattern and honestly just felt like my legs got really tired, especially on the steeper section from like 6000-6300m or so. Calves got absolutely worked tip-toeing up that but made it up to the 6170m rope point in ~1h53. From there, it was new territory and mostly super chill. One more rope and then a big crevasse leap and then a traverse up to the summit ridge. There’s a rope up there this year on the top piece of the summit ridge to the top, but it’s honestly more chill than last year. Made it to the top in 2h22 on my watch (stopped it at the bottom of the glacier, segment from Khare had me at 2’25’10). Stay up for a bit taking some photos and enjoying the view. Totally solo on the upper mountain.
From there, jogged back down easy. Legs were very tired! Need some easy days to allow for some muscular adaptation.
Total 14km, 3h35, 1565m+.