I slept fine surprising myself for not feeling the slightest headache at such high altitude. I open the door to the outside world and see beautiful weather, blue skies and sun slowly coming down to our camp 1. The period between 6-7am when we wake up and 8-830am when the sun hits the camp always feels extremely long. The sun is priceless in the mountains. It warms you, melts the tent frost, dries our sleeping bags and gives us courage to keep going. All these simple things that we take for granted in our daily life have unimaginable importance at high altitude in the Himalayas.

View of Camp 1. If you follow a line straight up over the middle green tent, that’s the way to camp 2

(Routine: snow, water, food, packing – and sometimes trying to do your private business with no trees to hide behind, no shovels, bum freezing at -15 degrees and signs of snow leopard paws in the snow around camp 1, makes for a peculiar experience)

We get going around 930am. Florence is gone already. Didn’t want to wait for us to get ready and get cold. It’s her call.

We immediately hit the steep rocky slope leading to the hanging glacier and what we call crampon point. This is where we left our crampons a few days back on the way down. There are no other expeditions on the mountain so it’s safe. The mountain is ours, we are lucky!

Around 2 hours of steep climb and we reach crampon point. Florence has been there for the past hour and is pissed to be still waiting for a Sherpa to rope in and get on with the hanging glacier climb. She thought the Sherpa would follow closely but I guess it was miscommunication with them as they are behind walking with Glenn. Xav gives Florence a piece of his mind, I second him and by the time the Sherpas and Glenn catch up with us, we are in the middle of a heated argument with Florence, not a good thing at 6000m where you need to focus. She takes off with Ong Shu Sherpa.

Glenn has caught up and we rope in all together with Junga, put on our crampons, down a chocolate bar for energy and step onto the glacier.

This bit of climbing is almost mysterious. Steep shiny icy slope covered with a mix of mud and small rocks. A ‘treat’ for our crampons. The 12-tooth yellow Grivel Sabertooth crampons of Xav and Glenn and my orange Petzl Vasak Leverlock bite in this compound gracefully, sometimes helped by some kicking to guarantee that we hit in the ice deeply enough. Then, it’s all about evaluation and trust, you need to trust that the grip is there and keep going up. You are roped in with other members and whenever you stop you pull the rope, jerking the guy in front of you backwards and also forcing 3 more people to stop. It’s about real teamwork, great patience for each other, respect and pace.

We proceed to higher grounds, the shapes and colors of the glacier are phenomenal: blue ice, black ice, hanging ice chunks, stalactites, and towering ridges around us. We feel small and humble in this magical decor.

We keep pushing and reach the snow covered glacier. It feels safe because is all covered in deep and soft looking snow but danger lures. The rope suddenly jerks and Xavier is down in the snow with part of his legs nowhere to be seen, he has walked on a snow bridge covering a crevasse and has fallen through! Thank good he does not panic, stays extremely calm and shouts to Junga: ‘Junga! What do I do?’ I am right behind him and advise him to slowly move his body to the safe edge. He does so and a minute later, all is well again. A bit of a scare for us but we keep pushing. It’s steep and tiring, the weight of the backpacks starts to be painful but soon, we see some orange and yellow shapes, the tents are in view. In the meantime, Chris has caught up and passed us with Purba and Lakpa Sherpa and reached camp 2 all the way from base camp. We are glad to have our leader back.

We settle in for the few hours of remaining daylight and sleep under towering Himlung Himlal humbling us from its 7125m summit. I am overwhelmed by the feeling of unlimited respect for nature and our planet.

Garmin’s view of our climb: