ALWAYS THE SUN - One Day as a Tiger - page 140

not to bounce on the ropes as they jumar. We get five hours of sleep that night, the
last decent sleep before the summit bivvy.
We wake in stages, opening one eye, then the other. I reach with a thumb to pry
open the icy hole in the hood of my sleeping bag. It is my breathing hole in the
frozen ocean of the night, allowing in just enough air but not too much of the
twenty-degree frost. The dawn light beckons. Like larvae knowing it is time to
metamorphose, twisting and turning in our sleeping bags, we rustle into action, re-
trieving boots, gloves, water bottles, clothing, all our stuff shoved deep inside to
dry. Through the widening hole in my cocoon, I can see an ice-caked wall looming
3,000 feet above us, like a skyscraper. Everything is frozen solid. The wall turns
from pink to white as the sun gains strength and its light swings down the face to-
ward us. Time to move.
From the top of the slabs, Voytek breaks out onto the headwall, a single, wide
crack above the overhang showing the way, like a giant keyhole in a door of vertical
stone. I jig for joy on the stance beside Krzysztof.
'This is the best climb ever,' I laugh.
'You think? But maybe not yet, eh?'
Then I rappel for the next load. The hours pass as they do each day; we follow the
routine, not making mistakes, dismissing moments of desperation. After the Poles
have done four pitches, it begins to snow heavily. This makes things tricky. Alex
and I struggle up the frozen ropes on jumars with the two purple rucksacks carry-
ing the Poles' equipment. They wait in the early evening beneath an overhang, the
obvious place for our first bivouac on the wall using the hammocks. We drop back
down two rope lengths to fetch the remaining sacks and jumar back up by
headtorch.
Snowflakes dance in the torch beam like moths. The jumars lose traction on the
icy ropes and I fall, my heart leaping with fear. There is the sense of zero gravity
for ten feet, then a jarring whipping snap as the clamps bite the rope again. It hap-
pens several times, each more alarming than the last. [1] Finally I reach the bivvy
site, fix the rucksack on a rope looping the breadth of the overhang and, standing
in etriers, begin to boil water for Alex and me. [2] Voytek and Krzysztof have already
disappeared into their pod-like hammocks. The snow settles then slides off the
outer covers with a hiss.
'How good are the anchors here?' I enquire nervously of the nearest pod.
'The rock is very funny, no good cracks.' It was Voytek, speaking from inside his
cosy pit.
'Thanks for the reassurance.'