Waking up this morning I felt horrible - stuffed dry nose, freezing cold, sore and a headache that seems to split my head. I have serious doubts that our plan to skip one camp and attempt the sunmmit one day early is such a good idea.
After a hot breakfast in our tent (it is too cold outside) we head off for the real "breakfast" - that is what the guides call the Barranco wall, which we are facing right now from our camp. The Barranco wall is a 200m steep rock wall that has to be climbed, sometimes using all fours. We really have to climb using both hands and feet in some areas and I am enjoying this part a lot. After a little while of climbing my head clears and I start feeling great.
When we get to the top, after about 1.5 hrs of climbing, I am kind of sad it is over.
We now walk over a ridge that is way above the clouds and it looks a bit like we are walking on the clouds, very cool. We soon get to a very steep downhill section that is partly covered in ice from the little streams running down the mountain. Tosh is walking ahead of me when he suddenly looses grip and falls head first down the mountain. I scream like a stupid helpless girl, but there is nothing else for me to do than watch him fall. Just before he falls off a cliff that drops at least 30m down the edge, he manages to hang on to some rock and stop himself. The seconds of his fall seem like an eternity to me and I am close to a heart attack. Tosh gets up and wants to continue walking. Anderson and I have to force him to sit down to check him for injuries. He is bleeding from some nasty scratches and I am pretty sure he hit his head on a rock, but he keeps insisting he is ok and wants to walk on. In the next five minutes he falls another two times, not as bad as the first one, but worrying enough to make me get really mad at his stupid stubbornness. He finally agrees to take a rest in a valley and tells me he thinks he sprained his hand pretty bad. I can see the swelling and am pretty close to punching him in the head for being so ridiculously hard-headed. I find a flat piece of rock that we use to stabilize and straighten his hand and tie it up with a bandage.
The hike from this point on is the most strenuous so far - steady uphill, very steep in sections, continuously gaining altitude over another 3.5 hours.
I strangely feel super fit and can almost hike at a normal speed at 4600m. Tosh is hurting badly more from the altitude than his fall, but does not want to take any painkillers.
He is napping beside me in our tent now and I really hope we will make it to the summit in only 7 hours from now.
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