Bahrain Royal Guard team reach Mt Manaslu camp

Bahrain’s 18-member mountaineering team featuring elite Royal Guard servicemen reached camp one on the 8,163-metre Mount Manaslu in Nepal yesterday, the team and the expedition’s organisers said. They reached the site following 10 hours of hard climbing from their base camp, after which, the team wrote on social media: “This morning gave us a fantastic sight above the clouds.” Organisers Seven Summit Treks added in a separate online post: “Weather seems to be fine till third week of this months, stable wind, 10-12cm max snow shower, clouds above 9,000m and sunny day.”

After spending a night at camp one, the team descended back down to basecamp as part of its acclimatisation rotation. The idea of this acclimatisation is to expose the body gradually to higher altitudes, forcing it to adjust, and then returning back down to sleep and recuperate at an altitude that the body is already used to. The human body is not built for high altitudes, and the higher one climbs, the harder it is for the body to get oxygen. However, the body’s capability for adaptation is remarkable, with the right acclimatisation conducted.