As I poked my head out in the morning of 16th January, I could hear Tim and Jim poking fun at the twenty four hour forecast for precipitation, which we had been gratuitously given the previous day by Smiler’s rather loud friend.  The day was perfect : no clouds were in the sky, and there was just a slight westerly wind.  Nothing suspicious was visible on the horizon.

This time it was I who was away first.  Tim, Jim and Dan were all taking it easy, so I said I’d see them later at Nidos.  It took a while to take my tent down, because of the tonnage of rocks that I had used to protect and secure it, but eventually I was on my way up the path once more.  The melting snow patch had now frozen again, so I knew that from now on all my water would have to come from melting snow.  The trek up to Alaska seemed a lot quicker than the previous day – perhaps because of knowing exactly how far it was, or perhaps due to acclimatisation. 

Tork’s tent had gone, and an hour later I found him installed up in Nidos, right by where I had left my cache the previous day. Tork didn’t seem as impressed with Nidos as Tim or I had been.  He complained that it was much dirtier than the other camps, which was true to a large extent.  I’d become more or less accustomed to watching where I was walking within the camping areas, and checking carefully, before pitching, that I wasn’t putting the tent in a spot that some clown had decided to use as a toilet.  Another reason for Tork’s discontent was that the wind had got up, and while Nidos was no more open than Canada, the potential for stronger winds was greater due to the altitude. Tork was fed up with his tent constantly flapping.

I wandered round looking for the best place to pitch.  There was a shortage of rocks in the lower flatter areas in the centre of Nidos, and nowhere had much protection.  In the end I found a spot over to one side, on the southern edge of the camp, near the top of a small rise.  The top of the rise was very exposed, but the little flat area I found was protected from west by the crest of the rise, and on the south and east by a little wall that had been built up to about half a metre.  At this campsite I just had to hope that there were no northerly winds.  At the moment the wind was moderate from the south. 

I was in less of a hurry to pitch the tent than I had been two days previously at Canada, but the operation was just as exhausting simply because of being five hundred metres higher : I had to have a brief pause after each rock.   In the end it was well over an hour before I was satisfied that the tent was as secure as it had been at Canada.  I crawled inside tired and rather hungry, and so had a well earned rest and a late lunch, followed by a siesta. 

It was encouraging to think that this would probably be my top camp, and that all that might lie between me and the summit was a day and a half of relaxing and acclimatisation, followed by one long day uphill carrying just a day sack.  Most of the hard work was probably over.  Or so I thought.

The next most urgent thing after putting the tent up was to start melting snow and build up my store of water.  Luckily there was a clean snow patch within thirty metres of the tent, and I wandered over, armed with my ice axe and a plastic dustbin liner.  It was good to actually use my ice axe for something, having carried it all the way up there.  I shovelled what seemed to be an enormous amount of snow into the bag.  I knew that the snow would diminish as I melted it, but I felt reasonably certain that I had enough for a couple of days.  As it turned out I barely had enough for that afternoon and evening – it was very deceptive.

When I tried to get my stove going, it became apparent that the problems that I had had with it at Canada were indeed caused by the altitude, because the situation was suddenly a lot worse.  The flame was very unstable, and I had to control the valve extremely carefully.  Slightly too much petrol vapour, and the stove would blow itself out; slightly too little petrol vapour and the flame would be so feeble that the slightest breeze would blow it out.  I started getting through matches at an alarming rate because of constantly relighting the thing.  After a while I kept a candle going in order to save matches.  I wondered if the cold was a factor, and tried putting the stove on something to insulate it from the ground.  Finally I tried the rather dangerous experiment of bringing the stove right inside the inner tent, but the stove’s performance didn’t improve enough to justify the risk, so I put it back in the porch.  The behaviour of the stove changed depending on how much petrol was left in the tank, as well as how warm it had got.  After getting through a lot of matches I eventually learned how to keep the valve setting at the point where the stove wouldn’t be blown out nor blow itself out.  The annoying thing was that the amount of heat generated at this setting was minuscule compared with the heat generated at sea level by the stove going at full blast, so the snow melted very slowly.  Also, at this setting, it was tending to clog up with soot, and by the end of the afternoon I had to dismantle the valve and jet assembly, and give it a good clean.

However, the afternoon was successful : by the time the sun started to weaken I had 3.5 litres of liquid water… and no snow left in the bag.  Tork wandered up to inspect my pitch, and he said he now regretted not having had a more thorough look round that morning when he had arrived.   Later I wandered down to the main area of Nidos where Tork was pitched, and we saw Dan and Jim arrive. They selected a spot just behind the baroque pinnacle, where the tents were most closely mustered. 

Tork said he’d seen Tim arrive, but hadn’t seen where he had pitched.  We had a brief search, and found him down in a hollow.  I had seen the hollow, but what was now Tim’s pitch had been occupied when I’d arrived.  Tim had his patent “solar snow melter” in operation in the doorway of his tent.  It was in reality his dark coloured waterproof rucksack cover, which when stretched out in the sun, would warm up enough to slowly melt a few handfuls of snow that had been lobbed into it.  Below one corner Tim had put a bowl to collect the water.    Both Tim and Tork had Camping Gaz stoves, which behaved satisfactorily at altitude, albeit with reduced heat output.

With the sun going down the moderate wind was making it feel very cold, and after a brief chat I headed back to my tent to have my evening meal. 

The wind continued to buffet the tent, but it wasn’t hitting with all its force, and it was no more than slightly annoying.  I found that the Chilean FM stations were coming in even clearer than before, and spent a couple of hours flicking from station to station, before it was time to see how well I could sleep at 5700m.

I felt a little cold in the night, even though I had kept my fleece jacket on inside the sleeping bag.  However, tightening both the draw cords on the bag was all it took to feel warm again.  I felt a little breathless at times during the night, but didn’t really lose any sleep as a result.