I spend a lot of my expedition life dealing with unknowns. On polar expeditions, every step is into uncertainty. Every hour we are faced with a continuously changing environment, or as the case with the Arctic Ocean, even the surface itself.

On big mountaineering expeditions, we climb in stages, climbing up to a new camp then retreating back down the mountain. We experience new challenges in stages.

For me, the process of mountain climbing and changing from known terrain to unknown as always been a huge mental challenge. I deal with emotions that sway wildly back and forth from fear to complete comfort. In polar travel, I am on constant 'alert' and never really relax and therefore am able to deal with better with sketchy situations.

I don't know it's late and I'm tired and that's my best hack psychoanalysis I can come up with right now.

Of course, there's also the fact that mountains are not my natural environment. I grew up in Wisconsin where the tallest point was roughly 1,200 feet. Still, I like the challenge of working outside my comfort zone.

Today was another tough day. We are trying to route find our way up toward the two peaks we are hoping to climb but everything is taking longer than we anticipated and its a lot harder as well. With any semblance of a route destroyed by the earthquake, we are left to pick our way across the rock covered glacier hoping that none of the boulders will dislodge at an in opportune moment.

Today our goal was to haul our climbing gear to another glacier at the top of the pass at the end of the Rolwaling valley. Sounds simple right?

After about an hour of rock scrambling, we reached the east side of the face we were hoping to climb. Even at the early hour, water was pouring down the rock face from the hanging glacier (that once reached the valley floor) above. We might be able to ascend this route but coming down would be very dangerous. Therefore, we decided to veer toward the west side of the face which meant another hour slog through the the thousands of loose rocks.

Finally, we reached the base of the 'normal' route up toward Tashi Lapke pass. Another sheer cliff face. Dorje, one of our porters assured us that this was the route. So, with little ceremony, we put on helmets and climbing harnesses and continued on.

Ryan being way more experienced completed the bulk of the work and I was impressed to see how comfortable he is in this vertical environment. It took a few deep breaths before I felt at ease but in another hour we found were able to unrope and scramble to flat area where we set up a MSR tent and stashed our mountaineering gear before heading back down and making the long and slow hike back to camp.

Tomorrow Peter and Tshering will hike back down to Na where Peter will then fly over to the Khumbu Valley and hike to Everest Base Camp. Peter has been a great companion and his presence will be greatly missed. We will have the help of Go Paul tomorrow to haul some gear for part of the day and then we will be on our own.