The day began like the previous one and then took us out of
the tundra and eventually across a high altitude desert and out of all vegetation
to our base camp from which we would attempt the summit that night. Unknown to us at the time, an Irish climber
had been tragically killed by lightning 2 days before we begun on that same
desert.
Base camp consisted of a handful of stone dormitories which a
member of our group likened to Alcatraz (although I personally didn’t think the
accommodations were bad at all). As we
huddled over our dinner, teeth chattering, and in dread of our 11pm wake up
call, a distraught Norwegian man collapsed on a bunk with the dreaded look of
defeat in his eyes. When asked, he said
he had become so sick and disoriented (likening to feeling to that of being
completely drunk) that he had been forced to turn back just 50 meters below the
crater rim. The rest of his team of 5
filtered in over the next few hours, regrettably only one of whom successfully
reached the summit. We were intimidated
to say the least. But to bed we went at
8:00pm where, for the next three hours we tossed and turned, some of us without
sleeping a wink.
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