FOUR MEN ON A ROPE
Well gentlemen", says Todd as the incessant rain ricochets off the fly of our tent. "We can either get up and push on through this muck for the next four days, or we can wait here and call a chopper."
The effect is immediate. Without a moment’s hesitation the four of us wriggle out of our down bags, hustle into our thermals, followed by our outerwear. The tent is a sea of damp Goretex. It is now 5.30am and within 45 minutes we will have packed, eaten and de-camped – dismantling the tent in a torrential frenzy – and begun our descent off the steep ice slope to the first abseil.
We are in a race against time – we have four days to haul ourselves, and almost 200 kilograms of gear, across more than 20 kilometres of crevasse-ravaged glaciers to our scheduled boat pickup. After more than two weeks braving the changeable weather of the ice cap, we know it will be challenging - and uncomfortable – but we are fit and well-fed and we can no longer afford to view ‘bad weather’ as an excuse to stay tent-bound and play cards.
STARTING OUT
Two weeks earlier, our four-man team had left the security of Lago Leones with heavy loads on our backs. Avid hikers sharing a common bond of adventure, Todd, Ingo and myself hail from Brisbane.
We had spent plenty of time in the outdoors and, having picked up some mountaineering experience over the last few years, were keen to extend ourselves with this journey across rugged glaciated terrain on a rarely-visited ice cap. Bjorn, our two-metre-tall Danish friend, had just completed a kite-skiing traverse of Greenland and was keen to extend his snow-touring experience to Patagonia.
Crossing the ice cap was something I’d wanted to do for over a decade, after reading Eric Shipton’s account of the first crossing in the summer of 1963-64. With the glaciers attached to the ice cap receding at an alarming rate, I wanted to see firsthand this magical, remote land before it was too late – and assist in some way the scientists that are studying and publicising the impacts of climate change.
Now, with three good friends, fair weather
