It was a strange night - the plan was to start our ascent at 2am as an alpine ascent, however for what ever reason the guide stalled us from going until 4am… Also, only one guide was to be supporting us from the team of 4 guides. We ascended to a glacier plateau at 4450m and it was now light. During our ascent the weather conditions were atrocious and the guide didn’t seem to be leading his group very well and was marching up the mountain as quick as he could - this obviously got tempers raised. Some members of the group were struggling with the pace but the guide didn’t seem to care! Unfortunately there was only one guide so no option to split the group. Also one of the members had gone through the glacier and we had do carry out a small rescue to pull the team member out of the hole! He was ok and after a short break we continued on. We also had a team of ski-tourers pass us aiming for the summit. We changed into crampons across the glacier .
When we reached the plateau some 6-7 hours after setting off from the hut and 3 hours after the ski-tourers passing us we had the first signs of the ski-tourers skiing back down from what we thought was the summit. They reached us and said that conditions were horrendous and they were unable to get anywhere near the summit. One member of their team had lost a ski and another team member had broken a ski! They strongly advised us to go back…. As the vision was very poor and the sky was changing to a dark colour our guid advised we turned around for our ow safety.
So this was a Nearly Summit - we had achieved 4450m - higher than I had ever achieved. I would of loved to summit however we all returned safely, maybe a bit down but the turn around was the right decision and it hadn’t helped with the late start and the use of one guide…
