How to describe the feeling of hearing the alarm go off at midnight? Our minds did not drift very far anyway, our brains know that something special is about to happen and focus is coming right back. No snoozing allowed there is no time for that. It’s straight into gear, we get dressed and look at each other, no comments needed we both feel the same: weird, what the hell are we doing getting up at midnight to throw ourselves at this mountain in total darkness?

Layers and layers of clothing come on. Time flies, once dressed we throw ourselves at the gas burner to start it but it refuses to heat up properly. We did not sleep with the gas in the sleeping bag which was a mistake and now it’s too cold to give heat. What do we do? We need hot water and a little food to warm up, I shake the bottle, Xav and I take turns to warm it up and finally we change the gas bottle, it’s better, snow starts to melt, we are running out of time for the 1am departure. Whatever! We need to eat and warm up, priorities first. It’s boiling, we share a freeze dried blueberry porridge, I can barely swallow 4/5 spoonful my appetite is gone at 6200, Xav managed to force down a little more. Opening the door we are attacked by extreme cold, tough climb ahead. Bare Hands are frozen within 1 minute when we put our crampons.

Its 130am, we are late, we were supposed to be ready to go at 1am, something feels wrong. Sherpas are still boiling water, Glenn is missing a battery for his headtorch and struggles with his harness and crampons in the cold, Florence is ready to go. Chris is very upset that things are not according to his plan but he is standing around rather than giving clear cut orders to the sherpas and to us. Then suddenly one of the sherpas is ready and Chris ropes Florence in with him and asks for the next to rope in, I volunteer. Xavier who was supposed to climb with me stays with Glenn to give him a hand.

Off we go, pitch dark, extreme cold, headtorch on pointing at the path in the snow in front of us. Soon after, we hit the first ice-wall. Its a total surprise to see this wall. I take out my ice-axe, change mittens to gloves to have better control but its tool cold even with my -29C gloves and I have to change back to mittens within minutes. I am now trying to warm back my hands, get a grip on the ice-wall with my ice-axe, pull myself up on the fixed rope with the jumar and consider where is Xavier whom I am supposed to climb with. Its hard, physically and psychologically.

330am: we have left for almost 2 hours and I keep pushing to the final section of the ice-wall. I am on the steep slope now, no news of Xavier but Chris mentions that he is behind and to keep going slowly but steadily. Soon after, i hear my radio inside my thick down jacket. I can barely hear but I believe someone is calling me: “Ben for Xavier…..Ben for Xavier” I remove my mittens, open the down jacket, it all takes time at altitude and brain power to find the motivation to do something unplanned. I pick up and Xav explains that he is running out of steam, something happened (I will learn later that he slipped on the ice-wall and hit Purba with his crampons, thank god only the down pants got damaged, not injury). He asks me for my reco: “Xav, keep going, push a little more and wait for the daylight, it will help a ton when u see light”. Radio back in and mittens on, I keep pushing. Lakpa sherpa is climbing with me now and helps me unclip and clip the jumar back on the at each rope section end. Its hard, cold and very soon I am in pain with a huge cramp in my right hand and thumb due to the jumar. I switch hand and move to the left side of the rope and keep pushing.

430am: I hear the radio again, Xav informs me that his is turning around, he is done, too cold He had reached 6600m and its a success. Xav dissapears in the darkness back to base camp, I can see a few headtorch lights flickering lower on the steep slope, going down.

From left to right: Chris, Lakpa, Benjamin. Daylight slowly breaks on the horizon.

530am: finally, the daylight breaks. The world comes out of darkness, all the summits appear around us far and most of the lower than us already. We are now probably around 6700 or 6800 meters. Its inspiring to see this beautiful nature around us. I feel fine, I keep a steady and very very slow pace, some deep snow sections make things even slower and absolutely exhausting, as I have to lift my foot higher and sometimes slip down what I just gained due to snow slipping under my crampon. I make very slow progress. My feet are very cold.

8am: the sun is starting to hit the mountain but unfortunately we are climbing the northern face and no sun will reach us until 930am or so. I had clearly observed this when at base camp.

9am: my feet are now half frozen, i wonder if I should turn around and go back down, the cold has not lowered. Wind has picked-up and the wind chill factor makes things even more difficult. I dig deep and keep pushing.

We reach the end of the fixed ropes, I look at the watch and I am amazed to see my Garmin telling me that I have reached 7000m, I am ecstatic! no more fixed ropes. Lakpa unclips from the last snowstake (metal bar holding the rope deep inside the snow) and climbs further up to fix the remaining 100 meters of rope on the final ridge. I am sitting on the snow, my feet are frozen but I can still feel them which is a good sign, waiting for lakpa to come back. He fixes the last piece of rope and we are off.

930am: we reach the end of the final stretch of rope that Lakpa has just fixed but the summit is at least another 45 minutes away. The wind is picking up and we clearly see clouds flying by at 7125m, scrapping away some of the snow on the summit.

10am: we are not on fixed ropes anymore, I am just roped in with Lakpa and we are slowly pushing up. I am exhausted, each step has become hard now and I have to stop to rest every few steps. Lakpa turns around and warns me of the wind picking up on the summit. I nod and tell him to push on.

1030am: We are too close now, we need to reach Himlung’s top! the final 50m are almost vertical and deep snow, the ice axe is hitting the snow and I am pulling myself up one hit of the axe after the other. we are getting so close, my heart is pounding with joy. Suddenly Lakpa is on top and helping me up onto the summit, the wind is strong, we kneel on the summit and look at each other with immense happiness. “We made it! we made it” says Lakpa, he is as thrilled as me. We take pictures, I shoot a few seconds of Gopro 360. My ice-axe is deep in the snow securing me, the drop towards Tibet side is huge, and the summit is not that wide.

Success! I am humbled by nature again, truly & deeply this time. Not many summits around us can match our altitude. At Camp 3, they can apparently see some shapes in the form of black dots on the summits, us.

We have to start the descent now. Slightly below, Chris, OngShu Sherpa and Florence have abandoned their backpacks in the snow to save extra weight and are getting close to the summit, they are about a half hour away from us.