Nelion from Point Lenana

Edward descending Point Lenana on rocks which 25 years ago were the upper reaches of the Lewis Glacier. (Compare this with the next photograph taken looking towards this viewpoint 30 years earlier.) I remember one misty Christamas Eve (1977), I borrowed some skis (sans one edge each!) from a visiting Japanese climber who had lugged them up to Austrian Hut and was too sick to try them. (Wouldn't it be cool if he read this, so I could get his name?) I strapped them on just below the summit of Point Lenana, (almost exactly where Edward is standing in the photograph) and then skied uncontrollably, and terrified with many falls, down the almost bare ice through the mist to the curling pond. The next day, when I led my party across the glacier to climb Nelion, we saw to my horror that my ski tracks came within a few yards of one of the sizable crevasses on the Glacier - the same one that Phil Snyder (what's he doing these days?) had skied into the year before, and broke his back! Great memories, but alas all that ice has now gone.