Shades of Haze

We get up with the sunrise at 6:30 and pack our stuff so we can enter the icy labyrinth at about 9:00 am. To reach the ice slope we have to pass the ice towers which takes about 1 - 1,5 hrs. Both Jan and Jiri already tried the track before but we had to look for a way through here and then anyway again. Suddenly, I looked up at the sky and it started to frown in an awkward way. One quick look on the display of my X6 and at 9:30 we came from the labyrinth back to the deposit camp which as at 5 850 meters. The weather has been giving us a hard time.


Huge piles of ice towering near the ice labyrinth (here during the rare nice weather)

The weather forecast said that it should be getting less and less cloudy but the wind speed should be rising on the other hand up to 50 m/s. The night seems to be with no wind so we agree on a night climbing. Jiri, who became the 'beat drummer' of our small team of three, even proposed to be off already at the midnight. That would mean 5 hours of dark night climbing and in extremely cold temperatures. Hence I suggested to get up at 2 am and be off at 3 am. The icy labyrinth will consume two hours of our time and just before the dawn we will be right under the ridge.