CHACHANI

Trying to sleep with your face jammed between the arse cheeks of a sumo wrestler. Your head is being crushed and you can´t breathe. That is what it felt like the night I climbed Chachani.
We arrived at base camp (5325m) earlier that afternoon. The guides had been telling us a few stats on the way up, such that 60% don´t make it to the top, and a story about the last trip when only one of a team of five Italians made it to the top.
From the short walk to base camp it became clear that it wasn´t just going to be difficult, there was a chance I wouldn´t be able to make it.
We were told to pitch our tents then do nothing but rest until 1:30am in the morning when the guides would wake us up with a cup of ´mate de coca´ and bread. So at 2pm on Wednesday I got into my sleeping bag with 7 layers of clothes on, my hat and gloves. This is when my head began to hurt, I had felt a milder version of this pain in Bolivia but this was on a different level. It´s just your body adjusting to the lack of oxygen (less than 1/2 that of sea level) and pressure, but it´s excruciating. It´s impossible to concentrate on reading and there is no chance of sleep. By the time it went dark I was going crazy with boredom and pain. The biggest mistake of the trip was not having a watch, I started to get a little obsessed with time. The Italian guy I was sharing a tent with probably thought I was crazy because I found it better to sit up, breathe deeply, and press my thumbs into my temples. However i think he was having a worse time with his stomach pains and groaning. Time dragged by slowly and I became desperate to start the climb. Certain that It would soon be time to leave I got dressed, packed my bag, sat on a rock and waited amusing myself with the camera.. For some reason it felt easier to breathe outside. I waited for what must of been one hour, eventually the guides came round with tea and told us it was 2:30am. We were leaving late because the wind was so strong and the temperature would be -20 on the traverses.
At 3am my headache had gone and our group was ready to leave. There was seven in the group and two guides. Ten minutes later the first person, an English girl dropped out.
We worked our way in a zig zag between and over large rocks. Amazingly I wasn´t tired and started to enjoy it. We reached the top of the first pass where we put on our tampons to walk across the ice. We are at 5500 meters and the second person, an English guy on a mountaineering holiday drops out. We start the first traverse around the Angel peak over a sheet of ice. It´s pitch black, just a small amount of light from a John Helm head torch lights up the steep drop to the left of my feet and the small ice crevases beneath them. The tampons are good but it´s tough work digging the ice axe in every few steps although it´s wicked fun. It felt like I was on an expedition across the Artic. It was bitterly cold, my fingers and toes went numb, but my ridiculous beard is finally worth while. I realised later from looking back at the photos that my lips had also started bleeding as I had blood across my teeth.
Soon the next guy, an Italian drops out, this time one of the guides has to leave with him. It takes two hours to traverse across the ice, as we take off our tampoms and ascend the Fatima peak to 5800 meters the sun begins to rise. This is when it really starts to hurt. It feels like there is no air to breathe, ten small steps and your finished, you stop to regain it but the deep breaths make you dizzy.

At one point we rested and I managed to sleep for 5 minutes. Everyone is totally exusted. Nobody is speaking, just glancing looks of pain, and yells of exhaustion. For the next four hours we climb towards to summit of Chachani. I occasionally had bursts of energy and at one point I raced ahead thinking I was going to beat our guide Roy to the top, but soon realised I had gone the wrong way.
After seven hours, and seven fake summits (you think you have made it then another summit appears) we made it to the top, 6090 meters. For two minutes we all went crazy using the last of the energy we had, we were even treated to a volcanic explosion in the distance. The view was incredible and the feeling of height unreal.
Then it hits me...... I have to get back down! This was probably the worst bit having lost all my motivation. To make it worse it wasn´t downhill all the way. The tiredness hit me big time and I really began to struggle. My headache came back and I couldn´t walk straight, which became very dangerous on the ice traverses. People began to fall over and at times I just lay on the ice dreaming of a helicopter. The walk home was silent and took me 3 hours. It felt like you had just run a marathon, with nobody at the end to meet you so you had to walk for three hours back home. It was without a doubt the hardest thing I have done in my life. Not just the climb but the night waiting to leave. It feels great to have pushed myself hard after nine months of nothing too challenging, and soon enough it will sink in that I climbed to 6090 meters. 1.3km higher than Mount Blanc, 195 meters higher than Mount Kilimanjaro. I am glad I´ve done it, it´s another tick in the box of life, but I can assure you I will never do it again. I am just sticking to mountains with chair lifts and half pipes from now on.