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| John Mason on the Summit of Island Peak |
In all honesty I probably shouldn't have set off. But being a climber I thought I'd have a look. Two days earlier in Chukkung I wasn't in a fit state to get IP base camp. Anyway we set off at 0130hrs with Kumar the cook, who wanted to show us the way to crampon point. As we got stuck into the climb I got slower and slower and my cough worse and worse. At 5778m after a major coughing fit and vommiting I decided to call it a day and retreat before I ended up a causality or caused someone else to get into trouble. Rem gave me lots of warm clothes and came back with me. After a brief discussion John carried on to solo the mountain.
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| Ros and Rems' time to go down. |
John:
After Ros and Rem made the wise call to decend. Myself and Kumar continued to crampon point. For me this was the hardest point of the climb. Near running to get back warm we arrived just at the point you could see a glow of the sun behind the mountains behind us.
Crampon point was the furthest Kumar was coming. We shook hands and he decended to catch up with Ros and Rem. For me I had my own decision to make: to continue solo and unroped or to decend as well. Not knowing the mountain or the character of glacier; I made a calculated risk based on the snow conditions, aspect of the glacier and the 'motorway' path created by the trekkers before me that the risk was driven by me slipping into a crevasses or off the mountain rather than the ground opening up underneath me. So getting into the soloing mindset took it steady. Moving solo meant I was able to make fast progress to the summit and spend a quick two minutes on the summit for a photo and decend before the sun heated the snow.
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| First light on Island Peak |
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