My night wasn't much fun as the hurricane rolled straight over the top of us. Not only was a rather uncomfortable dehydration/altitude induced headache making sleep rather tricky, my coffin was being thrashed and battered within an inch of its life, by the storm raging outside. Although I was confident that my web of securing ropes that would have made a spider proud would keep me and the tent attached to the side of the mountain, the snow that was building up between the rock wall and the side of the tent was gradually pushing me out towards the side of the tent that wasn't supported by the narrow rock platform. With the canvass being beaten within an inch of it's life, and regular swirls of spindrift somehow managing to find their way into the tent and then straight into my face, however buried in my sleeping bag I was, the whole situation was less than ideal. Eventually, the night passed (even if the storm didn't), and I think that I managed a few moments of snatched sleep, and it was time for our morning radio call with BC. Now the plan was for Fabrizio to come up and continue fixing the route to C2, with our team shifting somewhere in the region of 1500m of rope up after him. So I must admit that I wasn't completely surprised when it was him who answered the call (if he'd been climbing, he would have left at least an hour earlier to get up to us in time). He'd naturally seen the conditions from BC and decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and leave the fixing for another, slightly less windy and stormy day. At least that got us off the hook in terms of transporting rope up the mountain - now all we had to do was extricate ourselves safely from our stormy situation, which upon venturing out of the tents, was even worse than it sounded inside. In these situations, you feel rather like an astronaut must do before making a spacewalk. Suiting and booting in the safety of the airlock/tent, before finally biting the bullet and venturing out into the inhospitable environment beyond. Struggling the see in the spindrift and snow being whipped up all around us, and struggling to stand against the gale force wind, not to mention the debilitating effect of the cold on our extremities (I'm certainly glad that I didn't need to answer the call of nature in this situation!). Fighting through the storm, we made our way over to the fixed ropes, and had to hand over hand down them (my fingers were two cold to manipulate my abseiling equipment). Loose crampons, again because of not being able to tighten them correctly, threatened to send my A over T down the slopes. My energy seemed sapped due to lack of sleep and no breakfast, yet I had to keep concentration despite this maelstrom all around. Everything seemed to go in slow motion as I struggled to keep the will to keep moving. The cold seemed to smash hammers onto my frozen fingers as they lost all motor skills.

However, I kept on pushing myself to keep switched on, not to let gravity have it's way and pull me easily yet uncontrollably down the slope, but to concentrate on taking every step one and a time, under control. The further down I got, the more the visibility lifted and the wind began to drop until I could begin to see glimpses of blue skies overhead. The biting cold of the spindrift stinging the exposed flesh on my face also began too lessen, and soon, I could look down the route with confidence, rather then squinting, huddled and hunchbacked like so much of the initial retreat. Even though exhaustion was always in the background, knawing and sapping my ability to make fluid and natural movements, the fact that the power of my enemy was now diminishing, brought on new hope and drive.
Eventually, I reached the end of the fixed ropes, where I swapped my ice axe for trekking poles to support my zombie like stagger down the last 300 vertical meters of descent to the gear stash at the bottom of the route. At some point, my shivering against the cold had swapped to sweating against the heat of my movements, and as I finally collapsed on the scree, I started tearing off my jackets as the sun burst through the cloud. Once I deposited my gear and my temperature regulation seemed to be working, I started walking back over the glacier to BC, having seen that the others were not far behind, and in dire need of food and fluids. 45 minutes later I collapsed into a chair in the mess tent in BC, before downing several cups of hot Tang (powdered fruit drink) and demolishing a delicious omelette placed in front of me. The others arrived not long after, and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief that we were safely out of the storm, and back in the (relative) comfort of BC. What a day, and it was only 10.00am!