Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It is Voytek's mantra, directed up at me from the assembled team watching my
antics from below. One of my etriers snakes gently through space on its 5,000-foot
descent to the darkening glacier. It has had enough. Alex lowers me in the semi-
dark. I am chastened, my forearms are running with blood and my knuckles have
been opened to the bone. Fortunately, there is enough snow on the small ledge to
make dinner. We pass pots of food and tea from hammock to hammock in good
spirits before closing off the world and the gentle snow that is falling.
Day seven: The sun drives us from our hammocks into a blistering blue sky. Moun-
tains glisten above the sanctuary's outer ring far to the east. Alex and I lounge in
our hammocks, while Krzysztof fashions a belay forty feet above my high point. As
he leans forward, the five belay pegs rip out and he tumbles though space. Pegs
ping past as they accelerate and I foolishly try to catch one.
'Ow!'
'That's less weight for us to carry then,' Alex drawls.
Cursing, Krzysztof has to repeat the crux, this time climbing higher still to find a
safer stance. I cook as Voytek jumars up to Krzysztof and then leads through on
the continuously steep rock above. We hang the sleeping bags out to dry before the
clouds roll in. It is slow progress today, this is the hardest climbing so far. There
are no safe pegs to jumar to the next stance so Krzysztof carries on. At last, he
finds a decent crack and two ropes are tied together and lowered for us to start up.
despite pulling twenty metres of rope through the jumars. When it is about the
diameter of a pencil, I suddenly spring off the ledge into space, and yo-yo a bit be-
fore daring to start. The rope squeaks like chalk on a blackboard each time I push
the jumar upwards. It is all very disconcerting.
'Polish special technology - it's normal!' Krzysztof shouts down.
The daily afternoon storm wraps itself around the face by the time we have made
the first carry up to the stance. The wind is blowing the abseil rope and it swings
out of sight where it might snag. Alex and I haul up the rope, coil it and tie it to the
peg. The Poles are out of sight above. We continue to the next stance where
Krzysztof is belaying Voytek on the last pitch of the day.
Alex and I descend to fetch the remaining two Haston rucksacks, named after
Dougal Haston who had been killed in a skiing accident the year before. We had
known Dougal. His ascents of
Eiger Direct
, Annapurna's south face and Everest's
south-west face had put him top of the British alpinist charts for several years. The
purple rucksacks are state-of-the-art. Each is treated with great care at every
