The summit of Misti

Just below this point we put on our crampons. It looks so close, but it's still more than an hour away - partly because of the 300m or so that we still had to gain, but mostly because we're not exactly at sea level here: Misti is 5822m high. For some of the climbers in our group, this point was the end of the climb, because they were too tired to go on. Of course, that was mainly due to a lack of acclimatization. One of our three guides waited with them until the rest of us returned from our final summit push. And even on this seemingly short section, one or two climbers gave up and turned back. I tried my best to motivate one of them to go on, but he was just too exhausted. I suppose that not everybody has such a strong desire to get to the summit. Personally, when I'm close, I really want to make that last bit. I've never given up only because I was too tired. I've learned that my this is both a strength and a weakness: my will power, or stubbornness if you will, helps me getting to the summit, but it also occasionally gets me in trouble. Sure, I've turned around a fair number of times, but it won't be the first time that I get back to camp much later than planned because I didn't want to give up on getting to the top. Perhaps I'm suffering a bit from summit fever ... This time, there was no real danger of getting into trouble because of that. First of all, we had three guides with us, so if I would have been really slow, I'm sure they would either stick with me or make me turn around - coz' when a guide tells me must go back, I listen. But since I had acclimatized for almost two weeks before starting on this climb, I was dealing with the altitude better than most our group and had no trouble keeping up the pace. And climbing conditions were almost perfect. Sure, it was very cold in the dark hours before sunrise, and the snow high on the mountain meant that we had to use crampons, but it was still an easy climb, nothing to slow us down except the fact that it takes some doing to ascend from roughly 4500m to 5822m. 15 May 2011.