Day 10 - Island Peak (6,189 mtrs)

Up at midnight and jump into my warm clothes as it is pretty chilly in the tent and delaying get out of your sleeping bag in such conditions just gets harder and harder. At quarter past breakfast is brought round whilst we are packing up. There are the usual last minute issues where something, having been carefully placed in one pile or bag, has mysteriously moved but in general things go pretty smoothly and we set off at 01:09. It wont get light until about 6am so we are walking with our head torches - this means that we will see very little of our surroundings for a while. We start out walking along the valley floor to get to path leading up the mountain and it is a great deal warmer than we feared it might be. Soon we turn up onto the steep path up the 'nose' of the mountain as opposed to the much longer but more gentle one that leads round the back. Very soon the group starts to split as the lead Sherpa sets a pretty quick pace and only I and one other, Simon, are able to keep up - Simon has excellent technique and it is a bit of a struggle to stay with them. The major issue is that I don't feel that I have acclimatised that well as yet - our recent days have been short walks at low altitude - and I am really puffing which does not bode well for the rest of the day! 

Despite the lack of air, the trek is really enjoyable including a variety of gradients as well as moving over snow, rock and ice. However we really aren't moving that quickly and start to get cold. I have bought a new pair of gloves for this trip but really struggle with them - it is something I will have to look into more for future trips - and soon revert to my tried and trusted warm liner gloves and 8,000 mtr mitt shell. At about 3 am the temperature seems to drop again and a bit of wind picks up and so we put on our down jackets and I add my new face mask - it is remarkable how much more enjoyable climbing is when you are nice and warm rather than a bit too chilly! This combines with the crampons going on as we have now cleared the final rock outcrop and are walking on snow and ice on much steeper sections. We are struggling a bit as neither of us wants to be the one to slow things down!

At about 5am or so we came to the final headwall which is about 150 mtrs high leading up to the summit ridge - dawn has broken although the sun is still behind the surrounding mountains.

The climb up the face takes a long time (about an hour or so) as we need to take a breath every three steps or so - this is where the lack of acclimatisation is really hurting us.

It was actually a lot steeper than it looks and absolutely exhausting!

Looking back along the summit ridge

But eventually I get to top of the ridge and then follow the ridge up for a bit to a small plateau and a couple of minutes later the Sherpa arrives to confirm that this is indeed the summit. The view is spectacular - Island Peak is so named as it appears like an island surrounded by a ring of larger mountains including the 8,000 mtr Lhotse to the North (blocking the view of Everest) and Ama Dablam (our main objective) to the South. 

After a few photos we need to head down as Simon is feeling pretty terrible and other people are now starting up the ropes and we want to avoid congestion on them. I am trying my go pro for the first time in real action and it will be interesting to see what the footage looks like. 

We reconvene at the bottom of the ropes along with someone else from the group who doesn't feel great and start the long journey back to camp. None of us are moving that well and at times the route is pretty tricky so it takes us quite a while to get back to camp. I got to the summit in 5:30 and then it was about 3 hours back down; setting off at a bit after 1 and getting back a bit after 10:30. 

Once back at base camp we have a quick drink and a bowl of noodle soup before stretching out on some mats - unfortunately the camp (except for the kitchen tent) was packed up whilst we were on the mountain. We fall asleep in the sun for a couple of hours until the rest get back in the afternoon. Unfortunately for them we still have a good 2 hour walk back to Chuckun and so they don't have much time to rest if they want to avoid the cold, dark and wet weather that arrives in late afternoon here. 

The walk back is a bit of a schlep in the end - it is not that tricky but long after the summit and we end up getting quite strung out - the low cloud and wind really don't help either. There does not seem to be much recovery by supper which turns out to be a quiet affair with people heading to bed soon after.