The holiday that had everything! PART FOURTY ONE!!!!
With Matt's glasses now another part of the vast mountain landscape, along with my torch, it seemed the easy thing to do at that moment in time would be to throw in the towel. Just to pack it all in and return to the comfort and warmth of the gaming domain. Matt, however was determined to soldier on. He insisted his vision would be good enough without the glasses in order for him to continue. All credit to him for that, but it must have made life pretty difficult. As we got higher and higher life was getting more and more tricky. It was getting a lot steeper and with the high volume of rainfall, the ground was slippery and hazardous. As Tom commented earlier, he had asked Drew if there was a path all the way to the top. You know like a route that we could easily follow. Drew informed us there was. I should really stop listening to Drew's claptrap sometimes...

He also informed us as we got higher and higher that it would only take another 15 mins or so to reach the summit. Yeah right....try another 45 mins! Legs were weary, spirits were down. We had lost a torch and glasses, my trainers had been destroyed by the elements and fatigue was starting to creep in. Yet remarkably, spirits in the camp were still high. I was laughing and joking around with Tom about Eric. Once again the poor guy had to put up with an endless stream of corny aussie jokes and accent rip offs. He had no means of escaping from the vernal shitstorm we were providing either!

I also pointed out that if there was one guy i could pick to be up that mountain with us at that precise moment it would be Eric. Rocks, knocks and sheer drops were nothing for the dingo warrior. He was leading the way without complaint. Almost acting as Drew's second in command. Any slight complaint from me and Eric would immediatly call me a pansy or something like that. Eric is a legend of epic proportions and his fan club continues to grow by the day......
We were really high up now and turning my head to look down for a second, i could not believe how much ground we had covered. It was an amazing view up there and despite being soaked through, the rain had calmed down and we were fairly well sheltered too. The grass, although wet was kind of covered in an almost frost like layer, which made it fairly easy to tred on. Drew was now picking up speed and starting to run up the mountain! He could see some light! We had nearly made it!

Slowly, but surely i could see hope. I could see safety, i could see the top! One by one we all made our way to the final resting place. A place to revel in the magnitude of our fine achievements and a place for Drew to have a victory piss by a nearby tree!!

I could not believe my eyes as the "mountain yak" decided to release his pent up aggression in the form of a piss shower. The poor tree i thought....i bet it did not see that coming anytime soon!

I did a small victory dance myself to the Johnny cash tune and others celebrated in their own ways. I decided to yell "Drago" in a loud voice - something i have always vowed to do from a mountain ever since the glorious Rocky 4. Anything we shouted echoed around us.
We were in the middle of a big valley and loving every second. I think someone decided to ring either Ali or Arbinder at this point. We all shouted "Why you begging it" as loud as possible down the phone. They were baffled, almost as much as we were when a girl answered the phone!!

At first i thought it was Marit, it soon became clear that Neil, Ali and Arbinder had found some female friends on their way back to the venue! We went mad!!! Typical. Eric in particular went crazy!!

"They have found some Sheila's" he asked. When we replied yes, he wanted to get down that mountain as quick as possible! "We can't miss out on the ladies" he said. He made a very valid point. We were all gutted about missing out on potentially landing a couple of Norwegian hotties on our final night.

I think Drew then decided to send a funny message to Karel. Quite possibly to prove we actually just scaled the beast. Drew had us all line up and using our hands we spelt out Karel's name from the mountain top. The image was then sent to him via his phone! Awesome! Karel was quite impressed by this i think.....
After the jokes, the glory and the resting, it was time to move on. Worth pointing out at this point that Drew had spent lots of time reasurring us. At the start of the climb, during it and at the top. He assured us that climbing up was "the difficult part" and that going back down again would be a piece of cake. He also said that there was a nice path we could follow all the way back down from the top. He insisted that we could literally follow it and it would take us from top to bottom in a leasurly and easy fashion. Why did i ever take Drew's word for anything?!?

Once again there was no path, it was two times as hard as climbing up and there were sheer drops everywhere!!

We came to realise this and the dangers ahead, within about five minutes of our descent. Seriously this was dangerous stuff. I was concerned and we needed to kip our wits about us. We paired up again with our usal tag team partner. Drew and Eric lead, Sami and Matt followed and myself and Tom were last to go down. Barber and the Gaff drew the short straw on this one for sure. We had to save each other on more than one occasion.....
Part 42 coming soon!!!!