— Touching the Void —
Joe Simpson

12 Time Running Out

I flung my sleeping bag across the tent roof and walked over to the shade of the cooking rock. The deep tiredness I had felt yesterday was gone. Indeed the only remaining evidence of my ordeal was the sight of my blackened fingertips. Already I was forgetting that they were damaged and was surprised when I couldn't fiddle with the small key to the petrol stove. Richard took it from me and lit the stove. He was quiet as he prepared breakfast. I sensed what was on his mind but chose not to talk about it. Last night he had broached the subject of returning to Lima. There was nothing to keep us at camp, and he had to renew his visa within the next five days. I told him that I still needed to rest and recover. It might have been true last night, but not now. I was fully recovered. My voracious appetite attested to it, and Richard must have noticed the improvement.

The bitter feelings, however, hadn't diminished. To leave the place would free me from an unrelenting presence which accused me, and the chaotic bustle of Lima would erase the silence which seemed to bear down on me each time I was alone in camp. In my heart I knew I should go but I couldn't make the break. The mountains held me in thrall. Something prevented me from leaving. I wasn't afraid to return and face the music. I had done the right thing; no one could challenge my conviction that I was as much a victim as Joe. It wasn't a crime to have survived. So why not go? I gazed across at the icy white sweep of Sarapo. Perhaps tomorrow...

'Feeling better?' Richard interrupted my thoughts.

'Yes. Yes, much better. It's only the fingers now... ' I trailed off and stared at my fingers, anxious to avoid his eyes.

'I think we should leave.'

I had expected him to take his time. His blunt statement shocked me. 'What?... Yes. I suppose you're right. It's just... I'm not ready. I... '

'Staying isn't going to help. Is it?'

'No, probably not.' I peered more closely at my hands.

'Well then, I think we should see about organising the donkeys. Spinoza is down at the huts. I can go down and sort it out with him.'

I said nothing. Why did I feel so strongly against moving? There was nothing to gain. To stay was stupid. Why... ?

'Look,' Richard said softly, 'he's not coming back. You know it. If there was a chance you'd have gone back up yesterday. Right? So leave it. There's a lot to do. We have to inform the Embassy, and his folks, and go through all the legal hassle and get flights booked, and all that. I think we should go.'

'Perhaps you could go on ahead. I can follow later. You go tell the Embassy and stuff, and get your visa. I'll follow in a few days.'

'Why? Come down with me. It'll be better that way.'

I didn't answer, and he stood up and went to his tent. He came out with his money belt.

'I'm going down to see Spinoza. I'll try to persuade him to come with the donkeys sometime today. We can get to Huayallapa if we leave at midday. If he can't manage it I'll get him to come early tomorrow morning.'

He turned and set off for the huts at the foot of the valley. As he began to cross the river bed I got up and ran after him:

'Hey, Richard!' He turned to face me. 'You're right,' I shouted. 'Get Spinoza to bring the donkeys tomorrow, not today. We'll go first thing in the morning. Okay?'

'Yeah, okay. See you soon.'

He turned and walked briskly across the dry river bed. I had the tea ready when, two hours later, I saw him returning. He gave me some cheese which he had bought from the girls, and we sat on our Karrimats to eat it in the sun.

'He'll be here at six in the morning,' he said, 'but you know what their idea of time is like.'

'Good.'

I felt happy now that the decision had been made. The weight of brooding lifted from me at the prospect of things to do, and there was much to be done.

We had a two-day walk ahead of us. The camp needed to be dismantled and packed into loads of equal weight. How many kilos to a donkey was it? Two loads of twenty on each side? Doesn't matter. We'll have half the weight going down. We'll have to pay Spinoza as well. Perhaps we could negotiate some barter. There are lots of things here that he would want; ropes, pans, penknives. Yeah, we can make some bargain out of them. Then we have to book on the bus at Cajatambo, and tell the police we're returning to Lima. Now that's a problem! They will want to know about Joe. Don't tell them. It'll avoid a lot of stress. We can do all that in Lima, and the Embassy will be there to help us. I'll have to ring Joe's parents. Oh God! What am I going to say? Just tell them he died in a crevasse, and give them the whole story when you get back. Yes, that would be best. I hope we get an early flight back. I don't fancy hanging around Lima for very long. I won't see Bolivia now. Joe wanted to go to Ecuador, and I wanted to see Bolivia. Ironic that we won't see either of them.

'Hey.' I looked up to see Richard bending over a boulder behind the dome tent.

'What?'

'Didn't you hide your money before going to Siula?'

'Jesus! I forgot about that.' I got up and hurried over to where he was standing. 'It's not there. I hid it under a rock near the gas store.'

We searched near the store but couldn't find it. I racked my brains to remember exactly where I had put the small plastic bag with 200 dollars wrapped inside.

'Perhaps it's over there,' I muttered dubiously. Richard burst out laughing.

'This is great! If we don't find it we're going to have trouble getting back to Lima. Come on, surely you remember the place?'

'Yeah, well, I thought I did, but I'm not sure. It was a week ago!'

As I said it I recognised a rock at the back of the gas store, and when I lifted it there lay the bag of money. 'Got it!' I shouted triumphantly, holding the bag above my head. Richard bobbed up from behind a boulder.

'Thank God for that! I was just beginning to think that the kids might have found it.'

He then started preparing a meal while I counted the bills to see how much I had left: 195 dollars. It was enough. I wondered how long we would have to stay in the city sorting things out with the Embassy and the police. There was bound to be a lot of bureaucratic time-wasting.

'What about Joe's money?' I said abruptly, and Richard stopped stirring the pan.

'What money?'

'Well, he hid his stash as well, remember?'

'He never told me about it.'

'He certainly told me. In fact he was quite adamant about it. He dragged me over to show me exactly where he was hiding it.'

'Go and get it then.'

'I can't. I've forgotten the place.'

Richard guffawed loudly. I laughed too and wondered at myself. The spontaneous humour of the last hour surprised me - and the way I had said 'Joe's money' without once feeling it had anything to do with him. I had burnt his ghost yesterday. The money was simply money, not his. Ours, if we could only find it.

'How much did he have?'

'Quite a bit. More than me, anyway.'

'Well, we'd better find it then. I'm not leaving 200-plus dollars to rot under a rock.'

He stood up and walked over to the gas store and began peering under the surrounding boulders. It was my turn to cackle uproariously.

'What the hell are you doing? You haven't a clue where he hid it, and there're thousands of bloody rocks round here.'

'Got any better suggestions? You were the one who forgot the hiding place.'

'We'll do it systematically. It's certainly nowhere near the gas store, that's for sure!'

I walked to an area of large boulders and tried to find one that would jog my memory. They all looked the same to me. I quartered the area until I was satisfied the money wasn't there, and then moved to another group of boulders. Richard stood quietly to one side grinning knowingly. After an hour's fruitless searching I stopped and looked at him.

'Come on then. Don't just stand there. Help me.'

An hour later we sat morosely by the stove drinking tea. We hadn't found the money.

'It's got to be there somewhere, for Christ's sake! I know he put it under a small stone near a boulder, and it was no more than ten yards from the dome tent.'

'As you said, there're thousands of rocks here.'

Between bouts of argumentative tea-drinking, the search continued without result. At four o'clock the two girls appeared in camp with two of the children. We stopped searching and pretended that we were organising the camp site. They smiled sadly at me, and I found them unnerving. Richard had told them of Joe's death when he had gone down to arrange the donkeys with Spinoza. The carefree sunny afternoon suddenly seemed to cloud over as I looked at their show of grief. They angered me. What right had they to feel sad? I had been through all that, and didn't like to be reminded.

Richard made some tea for them as they squatted near the stove looking at me with the same open and unabashed curiosity as they had when we first met. It felt as if they were examining me for signs of strain. I took their silence for pity. The two children stared at me open-mouthed. I wondered if they expected me suddenly to do something spectacular. The elder girl spoke briefly to Richard. I didn't understand what she said, but saw his face darken with anger.

'They want to know what we are going to give them!' He said it incredulously.

'What?'

'That's all. Nothing about Joe. They don't give a toss!'

The girls were chattering to each other as we spoke, occasionally smiling expectantly at one or other of us. When Norma reached over and began sorting through the cooking utensils I exploded. I jumped up, waving my arms. Norma dropped the frying pan and looked at Gloria in alarm.

'Go away! Go on! Vayase. Go on. PISS OFF!'

They sat stock-still in bewilderment. They didn't seem to understand and appeared confused.

'Come on, Richard. You tell them, and quick, before I hit one of them.'

I spun round and stormed away from the tents. Minutes later I saw the girls helping the children on to their mules, and riding off down the valley. I was shaking with fury when I returned.

As darkness fell the first heavy spots of rain pattered on to the tents. We retreated to the dome and cooked the evening meal on gas stoves in the entrance. The rain turned to heavy wet snowflakes, and we zipped the tent closed. Tomorrow the donkeys would arrive and we could leave this place. I felt relieved. At about seven o'clock an eerie sound wailed out from the cloud-filled valley.

'What the hell was that?'

'Dogs.'

'Bloody odd-sounding dog!'

'You'd be surprised. When you were on the mountain I heard the weirdest things at night. Used to scare the tripes out of me.'

We finished a game of gin rummy, blew out the candle and settled down. I thought of the snow falling on the glacier beneath Siula and the hollow ache hurt with a vengeance.

I opened my eyes and flinched at the sharp glare of sunlight. Tears brimmed and watered my vision. I closed my eyes and made a mental check on myself. Cold and weak. It was still early and the sun had no warmth. Sharp stones pressed through the sodden fabric of my sleeping bag. My neck ached. I had slept with my head crooked over between two rocks. The night had taken forever to pass. There had been little sleep. The hammering falls had severely affected my leg so that spasms of pain kept disturbing me when I dozed off. Once I had howled in agony when cramps in my thigh and calf muscles forced me to twist violently and bend forward to massage the injured leg. When the pain throbbed too insistently for sleep, I had lain shivering on the rocky cleft where I had collapsed and stared at the night sky. Shooting-stars flared in the myriad bands of stars spread across the night. I watched them flare and die without interest. As the hours passed, the feeling that I would never get up overwhelmed me. I lay unmoving on my back, feeling pinned to the rocks, weighed down by a numb weariness and fear until it seemed that the star-spread blackness above me was pushing me relentlessly into the ground. I spent so much of the night wide-eyed, staring at the timeless vista of stars, that time seemed frozen and spoke volumes to me of solitude and loneliness, leaving me with the inescapable thought that I would never move again. I fancied myself lying there for centuries, waiting for a sun that would never rise. I slept in sudden stolen minutes and awoke to the same stars and the same inevitable thoughts. They talked to me without my consent, whispering dreads that I knew were untrue but couldn't ignore. The voice told me I was too late; time had run out.

Now my head was basked in sunshine while my body lay shadowed by a large boulder on my left. I pulled the draw-cord open with my teeth and tried to shuffle out of the bag and into the sun. Every movement caused flares of pain in my knee. Though I moved only six feet, the effort left me slumped in exhaustion on the screes. I could hardly believe how badly I had deteriorated during the night. Pulling myself along with my arms had become the limit of my strength. I shook my head from side to side, trying to wake myself and drive the lethargy away. It had no effect, and I lay back on the rocks. I had hit some sort of wall. I wasn't sure whether it was mental or physical but it smothered me in a blanket of weakness and apathy. I wanted to move but couldn't. Lifting my arm to shield the sun from my eyes required a deliberate struggle. I lay motionless, frightened by my weakness. If I could get water I would have a chance. It would be just one chance. If I didn't reach camp that day then I would never do so.

Will the camp still be there?

The question sprang to mind for the first time, and with it came the dread feelings I had experienced in the night. Perhaps they had gone. Simon must have been back for two days... more, this was the morning of his third day! There was no reason for him to stay once he had recovered his strength.

I sat up suddenly without effort. The thought of being left galvanised me from my lethargy. I must reach camp today. I checked my watch. Eight o'clock. I had ten hours of daylight ahead of me.

I hauled myself to my feet, pulling desperately at the boulder, and wavered uncertainly on the verge of collapsing back on to the scree. My head whirled with the sudden change of position, and for a moment I thought I was going to black out. Blood roared in my temples, my legs seemed to liquefy. I hugged the rough rock of the boulder and held on tight. When my balance returned and the roaring eased I straightened up and looked back to where I had come from yesterday. I was disappointed to find that I could still see the top of the ice cliffs in the far distance. Turning towards the lakes I saw that I was a long way above the site of Bomb Alley. All that staggering in the dark had been for nothing. How stupid it had been to forget the watch-keeping yesterday, and how quickly I had lost any idea of time. Bomb Alley had then become a vague aim instead of a carefully planned objective. Without timing each stage I had drifted aimlessly with no sense of urgency. Today it had to be different. I decided that four hours would be enough to reach Bomb Alley. Twelve noon was the deadline, and I intended to break those hours into short stages, each one carefully timed. I searched ahead for the first landmark - a tall pillar of red rock that stood out clearly above the sea of boulders. Half an hour to reach it, and then I would look for another.

I hoisted my sack on to my back and crouched to make the first tentative hop of the day. The moment I jumped I knew I would fall. My arm buckled and I pitched forward. When I tried to stand for another try I couldn't raise myself on the axe. Once again I hugged the boulder and clawed myself upright. Fifteen minutes later I was still within sight of where I had slept. I swayed unsteadily as I looked back at my progress. At every hop I fell, but it was the attempt at standing that demoralised me. The first fall had been abominably painful and I had lain face-down in the gravel, clenching my teeth, waiting for the pain to subside. It remained with me, burning my knee unbearably as it had never done before.

'Stop, stop, please stop... '

But it stayed. I stood up despite the pain in an attempt to force it into the background. I could feel my facial muscles screwing up and my mouth pulled into a rictus of protest. I fell again. The pain stayed level. Perhaps the knee was so traumatised that it had gone beyond the normal boundaries of pain. Perhaps it was in my head.

In those fifteen minutes I lost whatever fight was left in me. I felt it ebb out of me with every fall as the chronic burning pain took over. I stood and fell, writhed where I fell, cried and swore, and felt sure in my heart that these were my last spastic efforts before I lay still for good. I let go my grip on the boulder and tried to hop. My foot didn't leave the ground, and I toppled sideways unable even to protect myself with my arms.

The blow stunned me. For a while pain disappeared as my head swam in sick dizziness half-way between consciousness and oblivion. I had cut my lip on the rock and tasted the blood trickling into my mouth. I lay crumpled on my side between two large boulders. The red pillar stood out from the moraines directly in front of me. I checked my watch. Ten minutes left to reach it. No chance! I closed my eyes and laid my cheek against the cool rocky ground. Through a hazy blur I thought of how far I had to go, and of how far I had come. Part of me cried out to give up and sleep, and accept that I would never reach camp. The voice countered this. I lay still and listened to the argument. I didn't care about the camp or getting down. It was too far. Yet the irony of collapsing on the moraines after having overcome all those obstacles angered me. The voice won. My mind was set. It had been from the moment I got out of the crevasse.

I would keep moving, keep trying, for want of other choices. After Bomb Alley I would aim for the upper lake, then cross the intervening moraines to the lower lake, contour round the lake to the moraines at its end, and after climbing them descend to camp. At least, I told myself that this would happen. I no longer cared whether it did or not.

I hopped forward to the lip of a hollow, fell, and rolled sideways into it. I heard water splashing over slabs from a long grey distance in my head. My face was wet. The muddy gravel at the base of the water-smooth rock was cold and moist. When I turned to face the sound, I saw a silver sheen of melt-water pouring over the golden rock. I had reached Bomb Alley. It was one o'clock. I was an hour overdue.

A great rounded wall of rock curved above the hollow in which I lay. The floor of the hollow was sodden. A cone of muddy scree was piled at the base of the rock, rising to a stream of water pouring down the slab. The sun shone fully on to the rock, melting the snow above it. With a strength I hadn't possessed minutes before, I scrambled over to the cone of scree and with one sweep of my axe brushed it aside. I pressed my lips to the thin trickle. It was icy cold. I gasped for breath between frantic sucks at the wet slab. Water splashed over my forehead, running over my closed eyes and off the tip of my nose. I snorted, pig-like, as a gasp for air sucked the water up my nostrils, then I pushed my face back to the rock.

A long time passed before I calmed my assault on the trickle. By then the terrible dry burning in my throat had been soothed, but the thirst remained. With every mouthful I could feel my strength returning. I sat side-on to the rock and my polar trousers sopped up the water from the wet screes. When sense at last prevailed, I scooped a hollow from the debris at the scree cone and watched it fill. Two inches of icy clear water filled the scoop - more than I could take in one mouthful. The hollows refilled before I could bend again for a second drink. I drank until my stomach hurt with the cold weight of water, and then drank more. I bent my face to the pool and slobbered at the water, coughing as grit caught in my throat, and trying to drink at the same time. I heard myself mewling and groaning with the delight and discomfort.

Each time I stopped, thinking I had drunk my fill, an overpowering urge to drink again would come over me. Mud and grit smeared my face and I clawed at the pool, enlarging it with numb, soiled fingers. I drank, rested, and drank again with the panicky obsession that it might suddenly dry up and disappear. Three days and nights without water had maddened me. I couldn't tear myself away from the rock, and drank with eyes tight-closed and face clenched in unbelieving astonishment. More water than I had ever dared think of, enough to fill the blotting paper feeling within me and turn me away, sodden and sponged, to collapse sated on the floor of the hollow.

I roused myself from the stupor of fluid and looked around. Sounds of water tinkling near me were a comfort. The hollow felt familiar. I had been here with Simon and Richard, and then a second time with Simon. How long ago? Eight days ago! It seemed unbelievable. I remembered the place so well that it seemed only yesterday that we had sat here on our rucksacks, filled with excitement about the climb. A few small stones rattled down the water rock. I ducked away instinctively as they smacked into the screes at the far end of the hollow. The water had wrought an amazing change in me. I felt invigorated. The previous hours of despair were forgotten. The empty soft weakness I had felt since waking had gone. I could feel my fight returning. The wall I had stumbled through that morning had been washed away.

From Bomb Alley I knew that the upper lake was half an hour's walking, or three hours' crawling. I decided to try and reach it by four o'clock. I stood up and hopped to the rock for one last drink, then turned and began to leave the hollow. As I reached its far end I saw footprints in the mud. I stopped and stared at them. I recognised the print of Simon's boots, and the smaller marks of Richard's trainers. My spirits rose. They were with me. I hopped past.

The moraines ahead of me were less chaotic. The mass of huge boulders tossed at random over the upper reaches gave way to smaller stones spread in a carpet between occasional erratic boulders. They shifted and slipped under my axe. I fell, but not against boulders, and now I could stand with less effort. The water had revived me but the sun, burning mercilessly from a clear sky, sapped my concentration. I found myself drifting dazedly in and out of sleep, waking with a jerk, and sitting up from the fall, shaking the sleep from my head.

The patterns happened of their own accord. I gave them no thought. They were as natural as walking. The voice still urged me on but without the insistent commanding tone of yesterday. Now it seemed to suggest that I might as well get on with it for want of anything else to do. I found it easier to ignore it and slump on the ground in a sleepy daydream. Yeah, sure, I'll move, but I'll rest a little longer first... and the voice would fade into a background of hazy dreams. Conversations from the past, in voices I recognised immediately, competing with incessant tunes and mental pictures of remembered places, drifted in and out of my mind like a crazy disjointed Sixties film. I swayed drunkenly on every rock large enough to lean against and let the sleep whisk me away from the endless landscape of dull dirty rocks.

Only my watch kept me in touch with the day. The hours passed unnoticed. I remembered the minutes of each dreamy rest and no more. When I fell on to my leg, the pain flared and I cried or groaned until it faded, then dreamed. It felt so normal to hurt that I was no longer surprised by the torment which ambushed me with every fall. Sometimes I wondered dully why it didn't hurt when I had fallen heavily. I asked myself endless questions, none of which I answered; but not once did I question what was happening. Muttered arguments jolted me awake, and I wondered who I had been talking to; many times I looked behind me to see who they were, but they were never there. I hobbled down a path I knew instinctively. I paid no heed to the landscape around me. The ground I covered was forgotten the minute I had passed it. Behind me lay a hazy memory of falls and boulders jumbled into a timeless idea of what I had so far done. Ahead lay more of the same.

At three o'clock I reached a point where the rocks funnelled into a steep gully. It cut down deeply, bearing a muddy yellow clay. A stream twisted along its base. This was the end of the moraines proper. I knew that the gully ran all the way to the lake, widening as it descended until it cut a flat clay-based path out from the snout of the moraines. I couldn't hop down it, so I sat with my legs in front of me and shuffled down the clay. The walls of the gully rose high above me and boulders hung over the sides in precarious balance. It was shadowed and cool in there. Occasionally I lay on my back and looked at the gully walls framing the sky above me and muttered vaguely remembered songs. The water seeped through my clothes, and when I sat up I felt it trickle down my back and soak into my sodden trousers. If I felt like it, I rolled on to my side and sucked noisily at the filthy water running down the gully bed. Mostly I shuffled down lost in a different world.

I stared ahead at the gradually widening yellow gully and peopled it with other figures shuffling along its bed. I imagined an exodus of cripples taking this yellow path to the sea, then thought of food, and the vision disintegrated. Every now and then I saw a boot print and wondered idly whose it was, until I remembered Simon and Richard at Bomb Alley and knew for certain that they followed close behind me. I smiled, happy at the thought of company and help if I needed it. They would come if I called, but I wasn't going to call. They hung back out of sight, but I knew they weren't far behind. They're embarrassed by my condition, I told myself, and felt ashamed. All that water had made me want to pee but I hadn't managed to remove my clothing in time. I was sure they would understand. So I went on until the bubble abruptly burst and their comforting presence vanished.

I stopped dead, shocked at my sudden return to reality, feeling scared. Before long another song played through the fear and, looking ahead, I saw the sunshine glimmering off the surface of the lake. I grinned at the sight and increased my speed.

'Four o'clock and all's well,' I shouted at the lake, and laughed foolishly.

A flat gravel plain ran out from the gully, forming a crescent-shaped beach at the lakeside. I tried to stand now that I had no downward pull to help me shuffle.

When I stood shakily on one foot the lake swam before my eyes and blood pounded from my head. I hit the gravel with a sickening crash and heard, as if from a long way off, a cry of pain. I tried again, but fell before I could stand. My leg had gone to jelly.

At first I decided it was because I had been shuffling for so long, then I realised that I was too weak to hop any more. I grimaced at the fiery wet rush of urine flooding down my thigh, and when it stopped and began to cool I tried once again to stand. The best I could manage was an arthritic bent-over crouch, with the axe shaft wobbling under my weight. I swung my bad leg forward and seemed to topple over for no reason. I hadn't the strength even to stand still. I resorted to a forward belly-crawl.

The water of the lake was astonishingly clear. Coppered green shadows glinted in its depths. Ice cliffs on the far shore overhung the water in hulking dirty grey mounds. A waterfall splashed noisily over the ice, and an occasional breeze ruffled the water so that it seemed to dance dappled silver and green reflections towards me. I lay on my chest with my head hanging over the small rocky drop to the water in front of me. I had slept, woken to stare at the lake, and slept again. The sun dried the gully water from my trousers. There was a warm stench of urine which drifted around me on the light airs. One hour I had slept, and now I looked across the lake wondering whether I should try standing again.

The lake stretched towards base camp in a long narrow ribbon. In the distance I could see where a jumble of moraines cut the lake in half. I knew that beyond those moraines the second smaller circular lake pooled against the dam of moraines above the tents. Except for the short passage through the moraines the ground was generally flat. The beach-like gravel extended to the moraine dam, and beyond the dam it was all downhill. It would be easy ground over which to hop, if only I could stand. It would be much faster to hop. If I reached the top of the dam before dark I would be able to look down on the tents - if they were still there. They might hear me if I shouted, and rush up to me. If they had left...

I looked back at the water. If they had gone, what then? The prospect terrified me. I knew the answer only too well. I couldn't believe that they would have left. It seemed inconceivable after my efforts. Nothing could be that cruel? Surely I had left such malevolence behind when I had climbed down the ice cliffs and passed the door to the mountains? A part of me hesitated, paralysing any thought of moving. I didn't want to get there before dark. It would destroy me if I saw that the tents had gone.

The voice said, 'Don't be a fool, hurry on; two hours' light left.'

I stared into the lake, caught between too many fears, unable to act. When I stood up it seemed that I lifted a heavy weight with me, an almost solid feeling of dread that had crept through me, and I despaired of going any further. I managed two hops before falling heavily. I crawled forward on my stomach. My foot dragged over the gravel, jolting my knee. I sat up, faced the way I had come, and shuffled along backwards, as I had done on the glacier. I moved towards the second lake at a desperately slow pace, but I didn't stop, and gradually I could see that I was getting there. I followed the edge of the lake and the soft lapping sounds of the water murmured continuously as I drifted back into dreamland. I remembered a time of falling, plunging snow-bound down a mountain, and heard the same soft murmur of waves on a shingle beach. I had thought myself dying then, and now the same lapping melody pursued my shuffling progress.

The lake had seemed far longer than it was, and an hour later I had crossed the dividing moraines and started along the bank of the second lake. I recognised the place where I had attempted to fish for trout, and stopped to look ahead at the dam of moraines. It had taken me fifteen minutes to walk to camp from here. I tried to guess how long it would take me to crawl, and became hopelessly confused when I realised it had been a brisk hour's walk from camp to Bomb Alley. It had taken me five hours to descend to the second lake. I found it impossible to grasp how slowly I was moving. Yet, as I looked at the dam, I felt sure I could reach it before dark. I had one hour left.

The sun had been blotted out by a rolling blanket of cumulus clouds coming from the east. They looked dark and swollen as they packed into the valley walls. It was going to storm. I reached the moraine dam just as the first drops of rain spattered down. The wind had increased and gusted cold blasts of ice-cooled air across the lake. I shivered.

The wall of the dam was comprised of compacted mud and gravel. I remembered that I had slipped and fallen when climbing it before. A few rocks jutted out from the mud, which was tilted at an angle of 45°. At its head, a jagged crown of loose boulders was outlined against lowering storm clouds. Snowflakes whipped past me mixed into the rain. The temperature was dropping rapidly.

I used my axe on the mud as if it were ice, reaching up and hacking the pick into the wall and then hauling myself up with my arms. I kicked my boot into the slope with little effect. I scraped my boot across the slope until it lodged accidently on a small edge of stone jutting from the mud. Another swing of the axe and I had to repeat the whole precarious process while my injured leg hung uselessly beneath me. The higher I climbed, the more nervous I became. I thought it was because I was scared of falling and having to begin again, but it went deeper than that. The dark dread of what I might find at the top was becoming unbearable. It had been with me from the very beginning. In the crevasse it had been overshadowed by terror, on the glacier by loneliness, but once past all the dangers it had mushroomed into a consuming hollowness. Something huge and bloated wallowed in my chest, squeezing my throat and emptying my guts. My nerves jumped and twisted, and every thought in my head was focused on the possibility of finding myself abandoned, not just for a second time, but for good.

At the top of the mud slope I crawled between a jumble of rocks until I had reached the highest point of the moraines. I pulled myself upright and leant against a large boulder. There was nothing to be seen. Clouds filled the valley below and snow flurries eddied back and forth in the wind. If the tents were there I couldn't see them. It was almost dark. I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted:

'SIIIMMMOONNNN!'

It echoed off the clouds, and the wind whipped it away. I screamed a high-pitched howl at the clouds and heard an eerie echo from the gathering darkness. Had they heard me? Would they come?

I slumped down by the boulder, sheltering from the wind, and waited. The cold ate through me as darkness quickly swamped the clouds from view. I listened intently for the answering call, knowing it would never come, and when I could sit still no longer for the shivering I shuffled away from the boulder. There was a long descent of grass and cactus-covered hillside ahead. I had considered getting my sleeping bag out and resting the night on the moraines but the voice said, 'Don't', and I agreed. It was too cold. To sleep now would be to never wake up. I huddled my shoulders against the wind and, facing forward, shuffled down the hillside.

Hours of darkness drifted by and I lost all sense of place and time. I shuffled in short inching slides, peering round at the surrounding darkness in confusion. The idea that I was descending to the tents had long since evaporated. I had no conception of what I was doing, and knew only that I must keep moving. The wind-blown snow spattered my face in icy gusts. It would wake me from deep timeless sleeps and force the crawl to begin again. Occasionally I glanced at my watch, switching the light on and squinting at the clock face. Nine o'clock, eleven o'clock, the night stretched on, and the five hours' crawling from the moraine dam meant nothing. I vaguely knew it should have taken me only ten minutes to reach the camp. Five hours could have been ten minutes. I no longer understood.

When sharp cactus spines sliced into my thighs I would stop and explore the ground beneath me, quite incapable of understanding what had pierced me. The night blanketed everything from sight, and I slipped into a delirium of muttered words and distorted ideas of where I was and what I was doing. Was I still on the glacier?

Better be careful, I thought, the crevasses are bad at the end. And where have all the rocks gone? It was good not to feel thirsty, but I wished I knew where I was...

Photos

Bleak crawling grounds, miles of glacial moraines lead to base camp in the far distant valley.

Yerupaja rises above the shining slabs above 'Bomb Alley' leading down to the lake.

The moraine dam holding back the lakes. Joe crawled down the right side to the dried river bed and then left of picture towards base camp

The lake above base camp. The tents lay below the notch at the end of the lake.