Or You Could Fall Off Your Couch and Die. Pt 2

Deep night is gathered round about, fingers of four tie us together in the cold, headlamps swathing up the mountain slope in a fine filigree "Z" for a quarter mile. We, rope team four, the last, HOP as it were, take in the slack. A muffled crackly voince bleeds from Tim as an instructor somewhere out of earshot up the slope tests the walkie. "This is Hoosbeen Farteen, I copy," says Tim back to the mountains.

ascending. Ten points of contact, they told us, ten of the twelve spikes of our crampons in the snow at all times, which makes for awkward walking on the furrowed premelted refrozen snow.

"...unbalanced, balanced, move, unbalanced, balanced, move..." strange montras spin through my mind with every step, an attempt to keep myself, as well as everyone else, standing straight and safe. You cant just take a stroll through these hills.