Journey to the Mountains of the Moon - 1994 (13)

At Elena Hut it was very cold overnight and snowed lightly in the morning. We enjoyed staying inside our warm sleeping bags when Pierre and Till went off with Denisi at 7am to head up to Margherita Peak at 5109 metres ASL. When I went outside at 8:30am for a toilet break I could see the three of them high up on the glacier.

Dominic was still feeling bad but we packed up and waited for the porters who arrived at 11:45am. Eventually we left for Kitandera Hut at 12:45pm. The route down was very steep and we found it quite tiring at that altitude. Once again our trekking poles proved their worth in helping to stabilise our descent. On reaching the lower ground it was, surprise surprise! once more through bog before we reached Kitandera Hut at about 4:30pm.

Mt Baker from Elena Hut

Kitandera Hut was in poor condition although weatherproof. Dominic was still feeling bad so he got straight into his sleeping bag to rest. The four Austrian guys were there and I begged some sugar from them to sweeten a cup of tea I made for Dominic to try to warm him up and get a small amount of nutrient inside him. Pierre and Till arrived at 5pm with Denisi who had fallen on the glacier and gashed his hand on his ice-axe. They had made the summit of Margherita and were glad to have done so. One of the ‘joys’ of Kitandera hut was that it was equipped with a gas burner so preparing a meal was fairly easy. Dominic didn’t have any because his stomach was playing up a bit.

Kitandera Lake (postcard)

Despite being much better acclimatised than we were, the porters do suffer from the effects of altitude and one of them came to me to get some aspirin for a headache. We were to have another heavy day the following day so we were early to bed to get some necessary rest.

Next day we left Kitandera Hut at about 9:45am heading for Guy Yeoman Hut. The first part of the walk was a very steep climb up to the plateau between Mt Baker and Mt Luigi Di Savoia. By this stage we were suffering from exhaustion due to lack of appetite caused by the altitude and that we were using up a lot of energy every day. The plateau led us on through the Freshfield Pass where the climb up and through the pass was very cold. As we carried on across more level ground Dominic slipped on a rock and, putting out his hand to save himself dislocated his right pinky. It may have been broken also but he refused to have it strapped as he wouldn’t have had enough manoeuvrability so we just carried on, with Dominic obviously in pain.

Snow on the plateau near Freshfield Pass

After the pass we started to descend through more of the ubiquitous bog. Our attitude to the bog was now starkly in contrast to how we had felt a few days before. Coming up through the Bigo Bog we had tried desperately to keep our boots dry. Now we just didn’t care so it was just a matter of taking the shortest possible route and ploughing on.

After five hours of negotiating the bog, often with mud up to the knees, Guy Yeoman Hut was a welcome sight but still two hours away and still through lots more bog.

On arrival at the Hut our first stop was down at the river to wash mud off boots and gaiters so that we could settle down knowing that we were prepared for tomorrow. Now that we had reached the safety of the hut Dominic allowed me to strap his fingers and then we got into our sleeping bags for a while to warm up. Dinner was more packet soup but Dominic again couldn’t eat any.

On these days around the middle of the trek, apart from breakfast and the evening soup, our main nutritional intake was sports drink made up from the powdered form we were carrying. We had also taken along some ‘Uncle Toby’s’ breakfast bars but found that they were too tough to eat when our appetites were down. It was all we could do to chew off one mouthful and then try to chew it up sufficiently to swallow. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time too! Early to bed after dinner was a very welcome idea.