The best laid plans and all that. My original intention was to aim for an average 300m of climb per day, which would mean I would reach my virtual summit by about 28 March, thus allowing a bit of a margin for unforeseen events.
Unfortunately, a sneaky little organism that is barely alive known as COVID-19 has thrown a spanner in the works by causing a scheduled lock-down of the whole of New Zealand on 25 March. While I'm still allowed to exercise after that date, I don't want to count on it being as possible as before to go to the same heights, so to speak.
Accordingly, my revised plan is to reach my summit altitude before the lock-down deadline. As of today 23 March I have reached 7301m which means I have to smash out 1547m in two days. I'm kind of regretting those rest days now.
Luckily I have nothing else that I absolutely have to do these two days, so I will be devoting most of my mental energy to reaching that goal. Another positive is that my strength and fitness has noticeably improved in the last 23 days, so this is the best time to be needing to up the pace.
Now I have at least some idea of the mental challenges of the real mountaineers, if not the same physical ones.
At 7300m climbers are still on the Lhotse Face, and have another 700 metres of climb to reach the South Col, where the final camp before the summit is located. From there, climbers have to wait for a good weather window that will allow them to summit (and return from) the final pyramid of Everest, which is another 900m above the South Col, and includes some famously difficult challenges, such as the Hillary Step. All of this while their bodies are basically shutting down due to the conditions at this elevation, which is nearing the cruising altitude of passenger jets.
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