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on my ski poles and pull air into my lungs. During the pauses I
glanced around me at the valley sides which now seemed very
close. In places dark arĂȘtes of exposed rock protruded from
the white looking like the ribs of a shipwreck. The corridor
of snow-covered ice was little more than a kilometre across
and only the very peaks of the mountains were still visible on
either side of me, buried almost to their tips by cracked and
slumping layers of snow. It was hard not to imagine them as
silent sentinels of stone looking down impassively at me, a tiny
speck in a bright green jacket, inching along the central canal
running between them.
Every pause lasted only a few moments but the interruption
to my forward momentum made it more difficult each time to
get started again. The muscles in my calves and thighs began
to complain at the extra effort and my hips started to bruise
with the pressure of the harness and the weight of the sledges.
Taking miniature steps, it felt like I was barely moving and the
lack of progress was frustrating. After each break I would set
off with renewed determination, only to find that my body was
soon begging for another pause. I had been going uphill all day
and yet looking around me I judged I was only a third of the
way up the slope I could see; I had no idea what lay beyond
the horizon of my view. As I felt an internal anger build at my
sluggish headway I suddenly heard my mother's voice, calm
and clear in my head.
'Just keep going,' she said.
'Just keep moving forward.'
It was exactly the sort of practical advice my mother would
produce in times of crisis and I found it reassuring. The
important thing was that I was advancing, even if it was at a
painfully slow rate. I repeated my mother's imagined advice
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