The Descent

9th June
I managed to sleep that night and the wind was lower now too so that helped.
Next morning, we packed up camp and headed back down the ridge. We were following the trail of wands that we had marked our upward route with (wands a little bamboo stakes with brightly coloured flagging on the end used to mark the trail so that even when tracks get covered buy snow the route is still clear). The terrain was steep though and we moved fairly slowly.

We got back to C4 and stopped there for a while as we dug out our food and fuel cache. We got rid of a fair bit of the excess food and fuel though by dumping it in a large crevasse. It was too heavy to carry and we were now on our way down and would not be needing it any more. Then we put our HUGE packs on again and headed back over the second knife-edge, down the two rappel pitches and made it down to just above the mixed terrain pitch that Marcus had led on the way up, just above C4. The snow however was quite deep and very soft at this time of day, so we decided not to test our luck with our very large loads. We dug basic tent platforms (ahhh at last :)) and set up camp for the evening, and then we sat around and melted water to drink and enjoyed the views.

10th June
We got up a bit late and packed up the camp and headed down again.
I got the lead of the mixed pitch we had stopped above and true enough it was not great with the big pack. It took me an hour to get through it but it was then much quicker for the other guys. In truth, I think that Russell would likely have moved much faster through it than I would have (he is very bold) but I felt like I did a good job anyway.

Then it was back across the second knife-edge, and then the two rappels, followed by the still steep snow ridge. I was carrying my maximum load and it was very hard work to descend this steep ground. I went cautiously and Russell and Ian moved past me and headed down more quickly. We got back to C3 and had a break and some food.

We threw out more food and more fuel and then headed along the mixed ridge toward the col where we first got onto the ridge. I was tottering my way along the ridge here when suddenly my foot just went straight through the snow and I was on my face. It turned out that I had wandered slightly to the left (half a meter , no more!) and Id put my foot through a cornice. I was just lucky that I went down gently and had not collapsed the whole thing and gone for a very long ride down to the base of the mountain! – There is no way Marcus could have stopped the fall with the size and weight of my pack and the terrain we were on. It took absolutely all my strength to manage to get myself back up and onto the correct route. This would not have been the case a week before! – Just shows how tired I was after the climb and how much strength I had lost. I moved forward very slowly and carefully after that. When we caught up with the other two guys, Russell told us how he had just about fallen off the same cornice at a different point as they came down! Then we did the short rappel to the col and headed down the steep snow slope off the side of the ridge to Advance Base Camp.

The snow on this slope had been very bad when we had climbed up it over a week ago but now it was absolutely terrible. With the big packs on, every step we took we would sink in upto our groins. We half fell, rolled, staggered, and flopped our way down the hill, too tired to worry too much about avalanches – besides this was a lower risk than some of the other stuff we had just done.

We made it down to camp at 11:45pm and were absolutely beat. There ensued an interesting discussion about what to do next. We were all very tired from the climb and then the very long days of descent with big packs. The base instinct was of course to set up the tents on this safe ground and have a good long sleep. But Marcus had a different view…