MGoun Summit

Up at 4 for an efficient porridge breakfast and a prompt 5am departure. It is cold and breezy, and of course pitch dark, as we cross the plain the start the long climb towards the M'goun ridge at 4,000m+, 1,100m above us.

After a tramp across the broad valley bottom, we start a steady climb up the lower flanks, picking our way between low rounded bushes, taking a diagonal route round to the left before climbing an easier ridge, rather than the direct but very steep slope we come back down much later on. It is tiring nonetheless at this new altitude, although mysteriously beautiful in the torchlight.

The team has clearly eaten something bad. Our support guide can't even start, and it turns out that Hakim is ill, and has to leave us several times for what can only be an unpleasant wrestling with nature.

I am making slow progress behind the rest of the group, labouring steadily towards the grand cirque we are aiming for. A dim red light grows around us, and we see the sheer flanks of the M'goun directly above us as we climb a pleasingly shaped little valley, now glowing in the pre-dawn radiance.

We enter the heart of the great cirque, winding though flattened heaps of moraine to the left wall, where we are going to make the tough section of our climb to the high ridge. We start passing snow patches, then are well above them. It is an endless, dreary slog for me, but Paul kindly follows a couple of paces behind, so I don't feel too badly about my slow pace.

We eventually reach Bill and Lucy for a snack and rest in a small hollow at the top of the slope, at the point where it becomes a very broken steady slope up around the base of a peak to the outside of a huge cirque in the high M'goun ridge, with elegant little.....