Day 9 - The anticipation is always worse than the attack itself...

We woke up to clear skies, so we began our move to the base of a section considered the crux of the route. It was 2 steep sections with a flat section between them. The first part looked very steep and we all had a bit of nervous anticipation about the climb ahead.

But as soon as we began the climb, I feel like I can speak for the entire team when I say we cruised up it.

Personally, I was back in eye of the tiger mode just like the climb up the ski jump 2 days ago. But this was much easier. We only had 4 switchbacks.

As I trudged along on one of the straight sections, the words "the cage" appeared in my mind.

I became like an animal in a cage. The few feet in front of me was my cage. And inside that cage, I was in my own world. Nothing existed outside of it. Inside that cage, I was a beast on fire consumed by the immediate fight in front of me.

As soon as we got to the top to take a break, I got out of my cage and began laughing and joking with the team again.

It was an awesome place to go in my head.

I now have that cage to reenter for the next big battle. And inside that cage, there is only the animal.

For me, the hardest part was not the uphill, but going back down to pick up the 2nd half of the gear. Savage suffering is my jam. Anything that requires grace and finesse, not so much :) I've also never been downhill skiing before, so those switchbacks got me on the descent.

I fell once today and twice on the ski jump a couple of days ago. No big deal though. The only thing hurt was my pride :)

At one point I said something about skiing down, and Christian goes, well I wouldn't really call that skiing :) He was right, it wasn't. I don't know what it was, but thankfully I eventually made it back down okay :) 

We began working our way up the 2nd steep section, but then it started snowing. We can't move on a glacier with no visibility, so we set up camp on the flat section between the 2 climbs.

I will remember before tomorrow's climb that the anticipation of battle is far worse than the battle itself. The mind can do what it wants though, all we have to do is take the next step...