Camp 1 to Camp 2: "Ooooohhhhh Fudge. But I didn't say fudge. I said the queen mother of all swear words."
- Ralphie, "A Christmas Story"
Chris left Camp 1 at approximately 4:15 AM with the rest of
the team following in trace forty-five minutes later. It was quickly apparent that this was not
going to be an "average" day in the mountains.
Due to the warm weather and afternoon rain showers followed by freezing
temperatures in the Diamar Valley and lower elevations of Nanga Parbat, our day
would be spent climbing almost twenty five hundred feet of vertical ice.
After thirty minutes of climbing on already steep ice, we
reached the fixed lines. The first three
hundred meters were horrible, but as we would soon find out, compared to the
final six hundred, they were a pleasure.
The first three hundred meters were completed in around three hours, the
final six hundred in six hours. As the
nuns of St. Joseph
Grammar School will be
quick to attest, I am no mathematician, but that is a rate of movement of one hundred
meters per hour (or the length of a football field every hour and fifteen
minutes). Fuuuuudge!
Due to the almost vertical ice, the entire six hours were
spent on the two little front points of our crampons. Hello, Mr. Calf Muscle. I would pump my legs (a la NFL Hall of Fame
running back, Jim Brown) for ten steps and then collapse forward onto my ice
axe and gulp huge breaths of oxygen-depleted air. I would however, in my own sick way, gain
strength from the misery I saw on my very strong teammates' faces as I looked
between my legs--down the vertical ice face at their very similar body positions. At least I wasn't the only one feeling the
way I was! With the temperature rising
and rocks starting to cascade down amongst us, Chris decided that we should tie
off the group gear that we each carried on the fixed lines and begin to rappel
back down to Camp 1.
We reached Camp 1 after another two hours of dodging falling
rocks (sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully-Nelson Laur) and
after a quick team meeting, the entire team (minus Anna) descended another hour
and half to Base Camp and our much needed showers, snacks and dinner. And Johnny Cash.
