Tagne 2001

Andy's Diary

Day 32 - Sunday 29th July 2001

see also Dan's Diary for today

I left Dan at the camp and began my descent to ABC. I was now reasonably fit and acclimatised so I moved fairly fast. When was about 500m from the tent I remembered I'd forgotten to give Dan the GPS. It was buried in the somewhere in my sack and the ground I had come down was pretty steep and it really wasn't that important so I decided not to go back.

There was, however, very little else to think about. This was the last chance to get a good fix on the position of the mountain and I had just decided that I couldn't be bothered. Even though it really didn't matter it nagged at me all the way down to Base camp, probably because this was the last time I would see this valley for a long time, perhaps forever.

I made it to ABC quite early, and had a look at what the others had left me to carry out. Although I was early, the streams lower down had to be crossed before 10:00, after which they were so swelled with glacial melt water that they became uncrossable. I had the whole afternoon to kill.

Narinder had managed to swing a deal with the Shepherd who looked like Jimmy Hendrix to help us with the ferry, just as he had done on the way up. He was to turn up at ABC at 0500. I spent longer than I needed to sorting out what kit I was going to give to the Shepherd and what I was going to keep. I spent virtually the entire afternoon playing patience: I didn't win once.

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