Summit Day

8th June
It was still cold and very windy in the morning and it took us a while to get organized and on our way.
We left camp intact since we were aiming to be back before we had to sleep again. We were moving by 10am and although the wind didn’t help, the fact that it had blown away all the loose surface snow meant that we were able to cove distance quite quickly. This was good since we were about four kilometers from the East peak that rose up out of the summit plateau like a cone. We moved steadily in toward our objective over and around various undulations, hills and crevasses in the path.

About half way there, we met the Ukrainian team on their way back down. It was hard to figure out what their story was because of the language barrier but I gathered that they had summated the East peak but failed to reach the main peak which was located a further 10Km away. We felt they had done very well and `congratulated them but they seemed a bit disappointed with their result (no doubt not up to the standards of the old boy!). Anyway, they were out of food and fuel and had to head back down the ridge.

We continued on and came to the base of the East peak summit cone. The wind was still strong and the sky was staying mostly overcast with occasional blue hole – to keep us going :)

The summit cone was really hard work for me (last 500m of altitude up to 5910m) and I was the slowest of our team to climb it. It was frustrating for Marcus but I now know with hindsight that I was suffering badly with the altitude and that my body does not acclimatize to these heights (lower than most people can adapt to).

Anyway, with much effort we got to the top and the others waited a few meters from the peak so that when we were all there, we could all take the last few steps to the summit together. There were the obligatory summit photos and hand shakes all round. It was then 4pm and there was not much else to do but head back over the four km to our camp. We had all looked at the option of heading on to the main summit but the weather was not good enough, the distance was far and none of us felt like pushing our luck. We were all very pleased with the East peak as our high point and we had all said way back when the trip was initiated that this was the main goal – So back we went.

There were no issues on the return and we were back in camp by 7pm (much easier going down than up at those altitudes).
It took us six hours to climb up and three hours to get back down.