We began the descent...

06 Jun 2007

The snow was quite crunchy and really bumpy to begin with and this meant I really had to keep my legs really relaxed and springy. I had a fall in the first minute or so, as I got use to the terrain. It was smooth sailing after that. We hit the flat section and this is where the hard work started. We had to hike! We took off our boards and attached them to our bags. We then put on some snow shoes which would give us more surface area and reduce the chance of poking through the glacier.

We also had to attach ourselves to a rope and walk behind one another. We had to keep enough distance between ourselves to have some tension for the rope. If one of us was to unfortunately fall into a crevice, having the rest of us on the rope would stop the person from falling far as the rest of us would be effectively the deadweight on the rope!

We arrived at a section which had a big crevice and had a bridge of snow over it.

We had to ensure that the snow was safe to hold our weight. Fortunately, all of us were in perfect shape not one inch of excess fat on us (haha). I got a little worried at this point. James, our cameraman, went over it first. James made it safely, so we slowly began the walk over the snow. I was very careful to ensure that I followed the exact line of the rope I was attached to and that I didn’t venture too much to either side. We all made it safely. We continued the hike for another 15 minutes.

At the end of it, we were totally exhausted.

We clipped into our boards and began the second descent. However, after I made my first turn I couldn’t hear Keith in my ear anymore. ‘Oh dear’ I thought, that wasn’t good news. I called out to him, thinking something had happened to him.

I heard his voice in the distance. He was still alive, however the batteries on his walky-talky were not! Thankfully I had spares and we were on the road, or should I say glacier, before long.

The weather had been perfect up to now. However, it was beginning to get cloudy and the weather forecast for the late afternoon had been bad.
There was the possibility that if the weather were too bad, the Heli wouldn’t come and we would either have to spend the night on the glacier in a small hut or attempt to walk down. However, due to the snow melting away lower down the mountain, this would have been a long walk and probably not the safest.

The cloud held back the poor weather a little longer. We got to another flat section and removed our boards. We began the final 30 minute hike to the spot where the heli was to meet us. On hearing the Helicopter we got our stuff close together and sat on the ground in a huddle.

The helicopter Landed a few meters away. Once again, it blinded all my senses. However, it wasn’t able to blind the feeling of the amazing relief on surviving one of the toughest challenges I had done in my life and demonstrating we can push the limits when it comes towards ourselves. With that thought, I climbed into the helicopter with the rest of the team.