Page 43 - SA Mountain Issue 62

Voytek leads HVS (5.9) in the Cyclotron, on day three
Alex takes the ice screws, organises them carefully on two karabiners on either side of his harness. He takes four deep breaths, exhaling like a locomotive gathering steam, then makes a perfect placement with his axe in the ice above. He leads nearly a full rope length with one screw for protection before he cuts a narrow stance in the hard ice and brings us up in tandem.
Alex shouts down his news and begins to squirm and chimney up and out toward the lip. Thirty feet later, he is looking down through a hole at his alarmed companions. To him, we appear as red-jacketed gnats on a vertical mirror. Then Alex rolls onto his back, swings his Terrordactyl and takes a comforting bite into the hard ice above. His arse hangs in space for a moment, then he gyrates up and out of sight. There is a shout of elation. I am last up and roll out onto the broad summit plateau. I am facing a new horizon at last, new ranges
We are now only twenty feet below
the bottom of the cornice. It looks impenetrable. Alex takes the recovered ice screw and sets off again. With a grin I agree he is a bit like a monkey. His front points barely scratch the surface as he tiptoes up near-vertical ice. Unexpectedly, he nds a hole at the base of the cornice, climbs in and rests. While gazing at the unlikely prospect of ice now stretching twenty feet out over his head, he spies a slice cut deeply into the cornice, which leads diagonally up and right. It ends in a wedge of deep blue sky.
of peaks tumbling away to the west and south.
‘Bloody hell,’ I say, ‘it’s as at as the top of Ben Nevis up here.’
Voytek and Alex are thirty feet back from the edge with axes sunk deep for a belay. I stagger toward them, arms dragging, spirits ying.
‘You look like you’ve just seen heaven.’
‘I guess this is as close as we’ll get, kid.’
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