Page 15 - 2021 AMA Summer

Gaining height late in the day
a distant ridge and drop down to a small village where we were to spend the night sleeping in the gym of a school. After the wood, the ascent steepened and we soon found ourselves in a wide gully down which a stream had been flowing, but now in March, it was just a mass of ice covering the rocks. This required care as a slip would have sent me hurtling down from ledge to ledge to the bottom which was well over one hundred feet below. A couple of us took off their skis while others side stepped up the snow which covered the ice. It was very slow going.
At last, the small party was assembled at the top of the gully and before us was a gentler snowfield that led to the distant ridge. It was now late afternoon and while waiting for the last of the party to catch up we dug a hole in the snow to check on the profile and the stability of the crust. The snow layers looked stable and when the last person arrived, we pushed on to the ridge. The shadow of the skier in front was long now and I realised we were rather late to be on the ridge.
It was downhill from the ridge to the valley below, an easy run on skis and our spirits were high. The maps did not clearly show the best line to take so we skied down only to find that we were at the top of a high cliff. This was frustrating and time-consuming as we had to take our skis off – put the skins back under them
which allowed us to ski back up to the ridge. After we had repeated this exercise a few times it was pitch black, and we were navigating with head torches, map and compass. The cold made replacing batteries in head torches difficult as our fingers were frozen.
By about one o'clock in the morning, we were tired and unable to find a suitable route down. It was bitterly cold, and the wind was strong. I decided we had better spend the night where we were, in relative safety. So, we decided to dig two snow
Hotel Savoy - the hut where Jan hid and cut off his gangrenous toes
Mike Wright with pistol used by Jan Baalsrud
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