We followed the fixed ropes up through a 60-70 degree mixed ice/rock couloir in the dark, then traversed along a ledge that was about 10m long but only 15cm wide so only the ball of your feet touched the ground, beneath was a dark abyss that I guessed was probably 1.5km down, on the way back down we could tell it was certainly over 1km drop.

It was very cold and windy, about -25C plus the wind chill factor of 40kmph winds. I was fine in my Antarctica down jacket but the others were cold, we reached camp three at dawn and were relieved to find an empty tent that we sheltered in for an hour to let the wind subside.

We then continued up past the Dablam (the dangerous looking ice cliffs) up steep blue ice requiring us to front point with our crampons (i.e. the only piece of us touching the mountain were the two spikes sticking out the front of our boots/crampons). Quite spectacular climbing. As we gained the ice flute that leads to the summit the welcoming sun hit us. There were a couple of 3m vertical ice steps that were a challenge but we pulled ourselves up on the rope. The whole team kept similar pace and we reached the flat summit at around 10.30am.

We were rewarded with fine views all around and spent about 30 mins on the summit. We then descended by abseiling most the 800m vertical back to camp two arriving at about 3pm, where the second summit team were waiting. We picked up our gear and descended to camp one arriving just before dark at 5pm. We were all pretty tired from a long 15 hour day, I collapsed into my tent and fell asleep straight away. All I had to eat on summit day was a Kit Kat Chunky and half a Bounty, amazing what altitude does, my body simply took energy from muscle and never craved food, at sea-level I would've consumed 7,000 calories on a 15 hour day, all I consumed was ~150 calories.

We stll need to descend from camp one to base camp until we're safely off the mountain...