Jan leading the third pitch on the Brunegghorn N face, towards the rock band

At first the Brunegghorn north face only had rocks coming through well away from the center, and we climbed the ice/snow face. But at around 3770 m there were more rocks and only a couple of gaps with ice between them. We used the bigger one of the gaps, and Jan built his belay at the top of the third pitch just below the rocks. Above the gap it was more ice than rocks again, but there were rocks too, and by now the ice itself had lots of small embedded stones that made it more challenging to put in our ice screws. That, plus the fact that the face got steeper and steeper higher up, would make that fourth pitch the most challenging for me. But right now I was just climbing in the moment, and blissfully unaware of what was still to come... 6 July 2014.