While climbing Artesonraju I felt really good. It was more a mental challenge then a physical one. Climbing this huge face, nothing changes, just the same monotonous movement over and over again. Moving one contact point at the time. Seev gave up he didn't like the exposure on the 60°, 600 m névé face, but I couldn't. Not yet. I still had energy, it was still early (or was it?) I don't know the summit seemed possible... I just had to keep going! It felt good moving up — just one way — UP! Even with the occasional soft snow patches and the clouds moving in, it felt good. And suddenly just 20 m from the top,
«My feeling changed and I just knew I had to go down. Fast!»
Not really sure why the feeling changed, I started hurrying down the face. It got quite
a bit soft at times, so soft you would suddenly sink in knee deep. But the true surprise was when it started to snow heavily as I was one third down the face and cause Artesonraju is such a steep face and the snow was all made of little balls, like someone ripped open one of those beanbags to sit on, all of it came straight down the face and I found myself down climbing in a constant stream of snow. To my relieve Seev was waiting for me at the bottom
of the face in case something would go wrong. Without him it would have been a russian roulette, trying to navigate thru a fresh covered, with crevasses carved, glacier in a near
white out.
Not sure what changed my feeling, but one thing I know. I am damn glad it changed!
Wouldn't have been fun being further up the face when the snow kicked in.