The Sound of...Blue Steel

I looked across at my companions and felt a surge of warmth for them, a previously unknown kinship with these people, these strangers, Theo, the pipe smoking historian of Svalbard, who says has a butler called Jeffery... (Though Henry and I think he's actually his imaginary friend...), Henry the Cadet and Sandhurst trooper, and also known affectionately as my Bergen buddy (believe me you need one, if you think you can lift a 12kg+ backpack on your back numerous times a day...think again!  It's not the weight it's the awkwardness of not trying to break or twist your back whilst swinging the darn thing over your shoulder!), finally Andrew the mountain leader (who seems born to be in the mountains, whilst the rest of us develops a nest of matted hair, chapped faces, and sharp pongs Andrew seems part of the element and will probably look the same no matter how long he stays out here), and also the anytime blue steel call uponer and outburster of sound of music sing-alongs...

All four of us from different backgrounds, yet all four of us brought together by this exped and just having completed the same summits... We noused it one (army term, used after mastering something), or ninja'd it...as the favourite term we used through our time here... (doing something with better efficiency than how it's meant to be done by the book - be it time or technique...).

After, the horseshoe victory we worked our route back down, where Theo found an unhappy Turtle which ran from him but miraculously turned into the happy pill it was meant to be way before reaching the bottom (the unhappy turtle is actually his helmet turned the wrong way on a slope and the happy
pill, well you can guess what that is...). We all childishly ran with him (the hiiiiiiiilllls are allive, with the soooound of....) and it felt great that we can express ourselves in ways I wouldn't dream of doing normally... The snow on a few parts of the mountain here was above my knee height in some places, so the trek back was more like climbing steep steps as getting out of them was more than annoying, after unroping I tried to navigate on neve, which is lovely hardened snow, hard to grip with crampons but lovely to the feel and at least guaranteed not having a hole chest height to climb out of at each step.  A few deers (female?) topped some of the higher ranges as we made our way across the frozen wastelands, they seem unphased by our presence.  Are we not intruding upon your land?  Do you not mind that we stain your perfectly white canvased view with our bold colours and thunderous chants?  We belonged, nature was telling us we belonged and it felt great!

The exhilaration of our success has rendered us exhausted, 9 hours in the field today and we still had to make it back to base camp! I suspect our plan to dig a snow cave to live in it for that night was out the window.

The rest of the two rope teams were already back having completed their objectives for the day.

I look at base camp, a place I had inadvertently called 'home' after viewing at it's insignificant size amongst the vastness of the arctic when on top of one of the peaks a few days ago. *Home*, something I haven't called anywhere for ages back in the UK... Strange how after a long hard day even a bit of plastic on snow can be known as 'home, to me. It's setting perfectly nested against the gentle rolling whiteness, like a big playground of wonderment, reminds me of being a kid again, so impossibly
tranquil and redolent of childhood innocence that I have misguided split feelings as on the other hand I couldn't quite equate them with my sweat ridden caked base layers and undismissable smell of yes-digestive biscuits ha - funny how laughing and crying at the same time... is laughable...

Yes, time for a shower! No, not that kind of shower. Yes when you're here for a certain amount of time, you tend to relate routines and objects out here to things back at home, as if to keep a bit of normality... A shower actually means wet wiping yourself. The kitchen area is the porch area of
the tent, the bathroom; a hole in the floor where our warm waste have melted the area till you can't see the bottom (nice), the garage; place to park our pulks etc etc... (some of myyyy favourite thingssss...)

Back to the shower; apart from Andrew, we were all faintly resembling the human beings we had been two weeks previously... no wet wipes will do, makes me pin for my cold shower I had resented all them days ago...

Hard to comprehend but full of admiration (and a little jealous) that some guys will be staying for a further 7 weeks!  It will be Auf Wiedersehen from me soon, and I will be sad to leave this place, a place I unknowingly called home...