Day Five - Up on the Glacier

1. Long delay in food organisation, so we didn’t reach the glacier until 4.30pm.

2. The very heavily laden boat (Sean, John, Nick, Monty, Mairi, Greg, Mark and myself along with six heavy rucksacks). The motor cut and refused to start in the middle of a 0 degrees, five minutes before hypothermia (if you’re lucky) pro-glacial lake. After about 15 minutes of tedious rowing, the motor finally started and we landed on the landing stage and fitted crampons.

3. Mairi’s crampons refused to fit, so we had to radio back for a replacement packhorse – Sean.
4. Nick’s pack had a bad waist strap so we went back and changed with Mairi’s which had been left
5. Nick’s glasses fell down a crevasse and we had a twenty minute break whilst they were rescued
6. Various crampons fell off (including mine!)
7. I fell down – luckily not down a crevasse


Finally at about 5:30pm we reached the medial moraine and the lower dump. Nick was exhausted so we left him there, with sleeping bag and bivvy bag and the party, Mark, John, Sean, myself and Greg carried on upward.

We reached half way from base dump to the met camp and had no news of the supposed arrival party coming down the glacier to meet us. John and Craig continued to met and stayed the night whilst us others went home.

The walk back was noted absence of surface water. Moulin holes, now still and full of water, made beautiful but quite terrifying sights, and slight greater care had to be taken to avoid the thinly frozen patches of ice concealing crevasses.


We finally reached the landing stage at 10:30, and though our initial ‘Ahoys’ went unnoticed, we finally saw the Land Rover move down toward the delta and the boat approach.

Home, and on dry land! My first day of ice-walking survived.