A man strolls up a hill

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Hey chaps hope you all had a fab christmas and new year. A few people have asked about my e-mail. You can add comments and messages to my blog which i can then read. Alternatively you can e-mail me direct at [e-mail]

I have just got back to mendoza after a little adventure in the mountains. Now aconcagua is 6962 metres high making it the highest peak outside of the himalayas. There is an argument that it is actually harder than the height suggests as it is further from the equator than the himalayan peaks and the atmosphere is therefore thinner, it being described as a small 8000m peak, personally i think this is b*****ks as following this logic vinson the highest mountain on antartica at 4897m should be described as a small 10000m peak. I suggested to some people that i had been climbing small 8000m peaks in scotland for years but they didn't seem overly impressed.

I had wanted to attempt the mountain by the vacas valley route which is longer than the normal route but has a more beautiful valley as an approach. However being the safety concious person that i am i decided i would compromise on the route in order to climb where more people would be around. Basically because i didn't have a guide or climbing partner as i was climbing the peak solo. I also decided i would take a few extra days acclimatising and bag a couple of 5000m peaks while i was there, this was to make sure i didn't have to worry about altitude sickness as i could see it being a tricky decision persuading myself that the headache, vomitting and breathing difficulties were a sign i should descend when i was only a few hundred metres from the summit. Having taken these 2 important safety precautions i felt it was totally reasonable to go solo (for the first time ever) on a peak 1000m higher than i had ever been before. After all it is all about the story and it had a certain ring to it.

Things started reasonably well i hired a mule to carry my food and high mountain gear to base camp and i cracked on with a couple of days food and my tent to the first camp site. The horcones valley which i was walking up is quite stark but still very beautiful. The sides rise quite sharply several hundred metres from the valley floor. The rocks are twisted and folded from the mountain building and are all different colours giving the place a slightly other wordly feel, particularly when the mist descends into the valley floor. The first camp is at 3300m and i stayed there for 2 nights. The second day at camp i hiked up to plaza francia which is a disused base camp beneath the southern face of aconcagua. This was at 4200m and a good acclimatisation. The route follows a glacier which gave me my first look at penitentes. Penitentes are basically ice peaks that are formed by the strong ultra cold winds unique to aconcagua. So the glacier surface is covered in ice spikes some as big as a person. they look great but are a real pain in the arse if you want to walk over the glacier surface as i found out numerous times later on the mountain. I have taken loads of pictures so if i get round to it i will add some pictures in so you can see what i mean. Anyway from plaza francia you can see the whole of the south face rising 3000m above you covered in hanging glaciers with the occasional little avalanche sending ice cascading down the face. It is really quite impressive and gets you in the mood to get your iceaxe and crampons out and have a crack. Of course the southern face is the hardest route, you have to have special permission to climb it and take ridiculous amounts of precautions as so many people have died on it. This is why plaza francia is now a disused base camp. It should also be noted that i have very little experience of ice climbing or any of the other required techniques for the south face, i also don't have any rope, ice screws or pitons with me or anyone to climb with so it would have been a relatively foolhardy attempt but you get the idea. while on my stroll to the south face i met an american couple who despite being american were very cool. Andrea the daughter of a mountaineer gave me the phrase the add factor. Adversity adds adventure which i thought was quite apt and remembered for later use.

The next day i wandered on to plaza de mulas which was base camp for my route. It was a long day about 30Km and about 1100m altitude gain. The landscape became even more enclosed and plaza de mulas is surrounded by 5000m snow capped peaks with glaciers winding there way down, basically just begging to be climbed!!! I had taken my lightweight tent with me, it is not a high mountain tent, however it is a good tent designed to survive in strong winds which are the major problem on aconcagua so i was reasonably confident that it would be fine. You can't use pegs to pitch the tent as the ground is too hard so you have to use rocks instead. Everyone else seemed to do this in a particularly haphazard way, i having spent a good part of my youth building stone walls out of the remnants of a house my father had just 'altered' decided to be a little more orderly. I also spent quite a time removing all the small rocks from the pitch as i didn't have a footprint for my tent and was paranoid about ruining the floor before i get to patagonia where it may be very wet. It did take me about 2 and a half hours to pitch my tent, but at the end of that i had my tent up with a 3 foot stone wall around it on a bed so flat you could have played pool on it. So 2 and a half hours well spent then. It is also very good acclimatisation to do heavy manual labour when you arrive at altitude, (obviously thats good acclimatisation if it doesn't give you a pulmonary odema, if it does then it was foolhardy in the extreme and should never have been attempted), luckily for me i have the lungs of an ox so was 'probably' never in danger.

The next day was a rest day so i just chilled and met various groups of people who were also climbing the mountain. Most of the people in groups are basically being led up the mountain. They carry no weight, have there food made for them, never climb higher than the days objective and consequently tend to fail to make it to the top. Still it was interesting to see what the various strategies for getting to the top were. Which camps to use and how many nights after all I needed to decide how i was going to do it so finding out how everyone else did seemed like a good idea. I also had to check in with the doctor to get my oxygen saturation level checked. This is the amount of haemoglobin molecules carrying oxygen. At sea level you would expect this to be close to 100% as you ascend the number comes down and as you acclimatise it goes back up. Thus is a measure of how well acclimatised you are. Odema's the things that kill people from altitude sickness are caused by low oxygen saturation levels and so getting checked is quite important. I was well impressed with the doctor, he looked at me, told me to stick out my tongue, and said 'you need more water' then pinched the skin on my hand and said 'but not much'. It was quite an anticlimax when he put a device on my finger to measure my oxygen saturation level i thought he was going to get me to pee in a bottle and work it out from that!

The next morning i bagged my first peak it was Bonete (the hat) and at 5069m was a pleasant walk. The top was quite steep and made you work but the view from the top was spectacular. Base camp is a stunning place but is in a bowl surrounded by peaks. Being up on top meant you could see beyond that and into the distance across range after range of peaks. Well worth the outing. The day after i attempted cathedral a mountain about 300m higher than bonete. It however could only be approached by a glacier on its flank so gave me an opportunity to get the crampons on and have a play with the ice axe. As i mentioned previoiusly the glaciers don't have nice surfaces they are topped by penitentes. Some are huge and you have to work your way between, others are very small and collapse as you stand on them which is incredibly energy sapping. I spent 4 hours working my way up the flank. I adopted a number of different startegies as i went, i had never done this before and as penitentes are not a standard feature had no idea what to do. Initially i stepped carefully trying to find good purchase and leave no trail. As the mountain steepened the penitentes became smaller so this approach meant they collapsed beneath me making progress slow and tiring. The penitentes all line up in the same direction so are similar to a set of plates running across the slope. I tried traversing the slope to get my boot fully on the penitentes which worked really well until i had gone as far as i needed to and needed to head up slope again. Here i just knocked the bloody things down with my axe and then climbed up. I'm not sure whether it is classic technique but it was damn satisfying having struggled to get around them for so long. When i made it to the top of the slope i was quite exhausted and realised that the top of the glacier was not the top of the mountain. i was beneath a cliff of very fragile crumbly rock about 100m high as i looked down i could see a gully to the left 300m below me that headed across to a snow field that led to the summit. I didn't really have the appetite to go back down and start all over again, I would have ended up summitting in the dark, so stayed where i was had a very pleasant late lunch in the sunshine before heading back to camp. On the way down i laid waste! many a penitente will remember the day of destruction brought about by the thwarted englishman.

Having spent a few days acclimatising it was time to start up the mountain proper. The summit is over 2500m above base camp. There are 3 camps between base camp and the summit each about 400-500m higher than the last. For acclimatisation reasons each takes two days. The first day you carry all the food, fuel and kit you need up to the next camp and the second day you move up to the newly established camp and spend a couple of hours building walls out of the rocks lying around. Also it is important to walk higher than the camp when you move up. You should always walk higher than you sleep, however each time i moved by the time i had finished building a wall around my tent i was too knackered to go very far. Still the wind never bothered my tent at all i knew it would be fine to take up aconcagua.

When i reached the second of the three camps i had a decision to make. Moving to the third camp meant that you could not really sleep, not that i had much sleep on the mountain anyway as you can only sleep after you have acclimatised and by the time you acclimatise you move to the next camp. So some people attempt the peak from camp 2 and others move to camp 3 and try the peak from there. All the groups move to camp 3 as they have porters to carry their stuff and don't require the stone masonry that my tent paranoia was making me do. I decided that i would attempt the peak from camp 2 there were 2 reasons. From the peak there is a scree slope that runs down to camp 2 which gives an escape route should you need it. In double plastic boots it is also much easier to slide down a slope than carefully pick your way down a route when you are tired. The second reason and probably the most convincing was i couldn't be bothered to move camp again and it was only a one and a half hour climb to camp 3. Also a cheeky plan had come to mind I could summit on new years eve and get back to base camp for the new year party which would be cool. But in terms of cool it was clearly a superior plan to climb through the night, summit at first light and bivvy on top until the sun rises on the new year filming it for the chaps back home. Now no one else was doing this which would mean i had the peak to myself and clearly have bragging rights over all the other suckers who just got led up the mountain in their groups. I did discuss the plan with various people on the way most said it sounded cool but would be stupid as it would be incredibly cold during the night and dangerous. I therefore decided that it was a stunning plan and clearly the way forward. After all adversity adds adventure and i was supposed to be having an adventure!!!

Having come up with my master stroke i spent a couple of days on acclimatisation hikes. These were obviously to make sure i wasn't going to suffer from the altitude on my summit attempt and so that i knew the way. Getting lost on the top of a mountain in the middle of the night sounded like a bad idea! I had the GPS so carefully took readings at the critical places to make sure i knew where i was going. on the 30th i got to the base of the canaletta a scree slope 300m below the summit. From here i would just have to ascend the slope and traverse a short ridge and i would be at the summit. What could possibly go wrong!! I met some of a group i had got to know coming down only 4 out of 10 had made the summit, the rest had succumbed to the cold or altitude. I congratulated those who had made it but secretly thought that had those who didn't actually carried their own loads up the mountain then they would have probably reached the top rather than failing as soon as the going got truly tough.

On the way down i got the weather forecast and suddenly things looked bad. A storm was due for new years day and the weather was deteriorating. Now this didn't necessarily prevent me from going through with my plan after all the storm wasn't due until after i got off the peak (just) and there was an easy escape route back to camp 2. It did add some uncertainty however. That night i considered going through the day on new years eve getting the best of the weather and heading down to the party. It didn't seem as cool but was probably safer and meant i got a few pints on new years eve. However in the morning i would need to get up early, i was still tired from the days walk and wanted the next day to rest before heading to the summit. So i decided to push on with the original plan and go for it. There was no significant barrier between me and an escape route so i should be safe. Besides if the weather got really bad i could take shelter en route. I did take a heavy sleeping bag, roll mat and space bag to give me some bivvy options.

On new years eve i spent most of the day resting. My stove had been playing up, mostly due to the lack of oxygen in the air and melting snow for water was taking forever. I was getting dehydrated i needed to drink about 5 litres of water a day due to the dry cold air. Melted snow has no minerals in it and tastes very average to try and get through 5 litres a day. Most people had brought flavoured energy powder to add to the water and replace the minerals but i hadn't and after 2 weeks i really wished i had. Above 5000m your appetite begins to diminish. Now admittedly even eating lightly (fiona should be able to interpret that) i can still get through a significant meal. Most evening meals consisted of my big pan full of rice or pasta and my small pan full of sauce which is about enough to feed a family of four. The last couple of days though i had been eating less and so i decided to give myself a big meal to boost my reserves for the summit. I also had loads of chocolate that i had been hording for the summit attempt.

In the afternoon it started snowing and the wind picked up. I was a little worried as i could have summitted either the previous day or this afternoon and if the weather was bad and i couldn't make it i was going to be seriously gutted. Usually though the wind died down in the evening and the clouds dissipated. Around 7 the wind died down and i thought we're on. I boiled some snow so that i had hot water when i set out. This was so when i wanted to drink it it was just really cold and not frozen. Dehydration would be a real problem on the final push and frozen water is useless weight when you need a drink.

I set out just before 8 the sky above me was clear but an ominous bank of cloud was rolling in. Strangely i didn't seem to have much energy and made slow going of the route to camp 3. On the way the sun set behind the clouds giving a stunning picture across the ranges of the andes. The sunset on aconcagua was stunning every night although often i would be in my tent as the temperature drops sharply as soon as the sun goes down. As it got colder i began to pick up the pace. I think that big send off meal had taken all my energy and as i got over that and being too warm as i was wearing every bit of clothing i had. When i reached camp 3 everyone was in their tents so i just strolled on secretly pleased with my superior summit plan. The night began to clear it looked like the clouds would hold off and the wind died down. See the storm wasn't until tomorrow everything would be fine! Above 6000m the route curls around the north of the mountain and i kept seeing flashing lights. I was worried that it might be an electrical storm which would cause obvious problems seeing as i was climbing the highest peak in the area. I decided that they were fireworks it being new years eve, although i didn't believe it as they were all the same yellow colour and moved around. Aconcagua isn't all that close to towns likely to have fireworks that large. It most resembled the kind of flashes over baghdad when the americans bombed it at the beginning of the gulf war. I saw lights like this in Nepal when i was on the side of Dhauligiri and i couldn't work out what they were then either. Maybe small private wars just happen when i am on the sides of big mountains but don't get much coverage in the press!

About 12.30 i reached independencia an abandoned hut at 6400m I had climbed 850 of the 1400m i had to reach the summit and i was bang on time to reach the summit for 5 O'Clock just before first light. Sunrise would be at 6.30. I was a little worried that i might reach the summit early and have to spend longer than expected there. I had visions of building a little stone shelter to keep the wind off while i waited for the sun to come up. From independencia i had to traverse the gran accerro a line across a steep scree slope to the base of the canaletta from where it should be a 3 hour climb to the summit. The gran accerro had taken 90 minutes when i tried it on the 30th.

The gran accerro is very exposed and the wind races up the slope and is ridiculously cold. I had a balaclava on my face that just had a slit for my eyes. This was frozen all around my face with hoar frost building up with my breath. Every now and again i had to try and knock the frost away so i could see where i was going. My head torch was around the hood of my down jacket and was a little difficult to get where i wanted it. I had 3 pairs of gloves on and the third pair were water proof mittens so doing anything fiddly was hard work. However if i took them off my fingers got very cold, i already had to routinely check my toes and fingers to make sure they didn't freeze so just had to live with the torch where it was. Half way along the gran accerro is a rock, the only shelter on the whole traverse, i tucked in behind it and rearranged myself i was getting a little frustrated by my torch and not being able to see. However the only arrangement that made it better meant buttoning my down jacket across my mouth. I already sounded like darth vader and extra restriction on my breathing was intolerable so i left the torch where it was. As i pressed on the path began to climb uphill, The going was very soft and every footstep little avalanches would take you down the slope. It had been like that when i came this way before but seemed to be even worse. Eventually i realised i had strayed off the path, I could see my destination a large rock that marked the base of the canaletta, it was only about 400m away but every step the footing slipped and i slid down the hill. I tried heading straight up hill to regain the path but despite working really hard seemed to be sliding downhill rather than making progress. The path although hard going was reasonably stable and i had wandered onto a compltetely unstable slope. The sand gravel and rock were all different sizes and there seemed no pattern to what you could stand on and what would give way. After a particularly bad avalanche when i lost about 10m of height and started to get a bit worried i changed tactic. I decided to traverse the slope accepting i would lose height but minimising the height loss to a snow patch beside the rock. If i could make the bottom of the snow patch i could put crampons on and try to ascend to the rock. The going was incredibly slow but really tiring. after about an hour since i had lost the path i hadn't really moved and was now quite exhausted. I caught myself sitting on a rock looking at my destination with despondancy. This was quite a dangerous time as despondancy was exactly what i couldn't afford, aggressive confidence was the approach that would lead to snow, then the rock and then the peak. I was also getting late on my plan to get there for first light. So i fed myself some chocolate, Told myself off for being such a girl and launched into a series of big pushes for the snow patch which was only a few hundred metres away. Each time i would give myself a little pep talk about just get there in 20 minutes and i would still make first light. After a fast stumble, a couple of avalanches, a collapse to some rock and minimal progress i would give myself another pep talk and try again. Eventually i made it to the snow patch which was very steep rising above me. I put on my crampons struggling in my mitts but remembering a section in my book that mentioned someone taking off their gloves to adjust crampons and having their fingers freeze. I wasn't that cold having exerted so much effort, but my fingers and toes needed constant checking, strangely they would be cold then fine then cold, a specific finger then three toes and the finger was fine, then a different finger or two, it was most odd, but i had no intention of taking my mitts off. When i got my crampons on i started up the snow it was fresh so the crampons slipped a few times, i had walking poles but no ice axe so had to be careful as self arrest with a walking pole on steep snow was going to be hard work and i definately didn't want to fall, or have to climb up the slope again. Eventually i made it to the top of the snow and traversed a few metres to the rock that had been my goal all along. I was now at 6600m and it was 4.30, what should have taken me 90 minutes took 4 hours. I was completely exhausted and actually got my camera out and filmed a quite funny explanation of the last 4 hours. Basically saying that was really hard and breathing like darth vader a lot. (I will attempt to attatch it to the blog if the sound comes out, you can't hear much from the camera but hopefully it will come out.)

At 4.30 it was unlikely that i could make sunrise, although if the canaletta was frozen then maybe i would just make it. Then my torch went out. It had been fading then brightening for some time, however with the other issues i hadn't been able to do anything about it. The batteries in it were new and i had fresh new warm batteries in my pocket. Cold destroys batteries realy quickly but i had brought spares. The problem was that without light it was difficult to know which way round the batteries were required. My headtorch is very small and changing the batteries is fiddly i would have to take all my gloves off which didn't sound like a particularly attractive proposition. Heading off without light seemed like an equally bad choice so taking into account my level of exhaustion, lack of light and probable lateness for the sunrise i decided to bivvy where i was until first light. Now this wouldn't be the first new years eve where i have collapsed early under a rock, any of the boys from swansea will be able to vouch for that. I did manage to find shelter out of the wind and decided that the conditions were good enough that i didn't need the space bag, or the thermarest, just took my outer boots off and got in the sleeping bag and sat on my rucksack. This worked fine and i would only be there for a couple of hours.

Unfortunately i fell asleep. That was not part of the plan as it would have been easy to roll off my rucksack and have real issues with cold. As it was i woke up at sunrise. I was cold and had frost over my face but other than that was fine. I took a few shots and a short film sequence admiring the view, The shadow of aconcagua was cast between a pillar of rock and where i was across some ranges of mountains making a particularly attractive scene. I got out of my bag and put my boots on, got my stuff together and took stock. I hadn't made the peak for sunrise which i was pretty gutted about but felt i had had a decent adventure all the same. Cool points were diminished for not getting the new year sun shots, but some were restored for emergency bivvying at 6600m and i could still pop up to the summit which was going to be as cool as all the group people were going to manage. I was however badly dehydrated, the water in my pack had frozen through, a little dis-orientated and quite weak. I set off up the canaletta being quite weak and making minimal progress after about 30 minutes i realised that the top of the scree came to a cliff. There are a number of gaps between pillars of rock and the way to the summit is through one of those gaps. I had taken the wrong one, i had only ascended a few 10's of metres in all that time and effort and now i had to give them up.

When i got back to the rock i gave myself another stern talking to, fed myself some chocolate, gathered some strength and prepared to get to the summit. Trying to set straight off was not smart and had wasted a good hour and what little strength i had left. Chocolate is however an amazing restorer and will power is not something i am generally short of!!! It was now 8 O'clock and i was still where i should have been at 2 the previous night, fortunately the canaletta was frozen and i took a path close to the rock which caused no problem. All the literatuire goes on about the fearsome canaletta in fact it was a reasonable path. It is the scree below which caused the problems. They are the same slope of loose scree, it's just the canaletta is contained within a natural ampitheatre which makes it easier. The slope i had foundered on is uncontained and a hell of a lot less stable. Of course most people don't get onto it because they go in the day when it is light but that is a minor point.

Having ascended the canaletta the literature states that i had to traverse a short ridge and easily gain the summit. Literature is a load of b*****ks! I couldn't believe it the path was incredibly steep and hard work. In fact it probably wasn't that bad but i was absolutely knackered. I was stopping every step or two and really struggling but only had a few 10's of metres to go. There was a really interesting phenomena, above the ridge were swirling wisps of cloud. They were mostly white but had green and pink wisps. I thought i has hallucinating but remembered reading about the phenomenon in one of the books on aconcagua apparently it is quite rare. It made the final ascent kind of trippy though. I made the ridge and got a look at the south summit which is about 100m below the north summit. It was beautiful covered by a glacier on the south side and what i had seen almost 2 weeks before from the bottom at plaza francia. Ploughing on i finally made the summit. There is very little there an aluminium cross marks the spot, but the clouds came up so the view to the south summit and the ridge was obscured. I was shaking uncontrollably although didn't feel particularly cold. My overriding thought was thank f**k for that. I would have taken some photo's but there was nothing to take a photo of. Clouds obscured the view south and the view north i had been looking at for days. With retrospect i wish i had done 2 things done a quick film of the view to add to this, and filmed a birthday message for my sister whose birthday is in a few days. However neither of these things happened, sheer will power had got me to the summit, and having got there i didn't have anything left to do. I was also concerned that i didn't have the energy to get down. I really had given all of my reserves getting here and while the descent is relatively easy with few dangers it still had to be done.

So after about 5 minutes sat at the top i descended. The descent became an automatic process. The scree that had given me so many problems on the way up now became my friend. Every footstep was worth 2 as i had a controlled slide home. It was however another three hours of knackered effort before i got to my tent. I slept for a couple of hours and then descended to base camp. By the time i got there it was 9.30 and getting dark. Most of the camping spots were used so i quickly decided that i would bivvy again. If i could do it at 6600m then 4400m was unlikely to cause me a problem. Decision made i didn't have to put the tent up, that would be beer and steak sandwich o'clock then. 12 dollars incredibly well spent!!! I got a few looks from people in the morning when they got out of their tents complaining about the cold and saw me in a sleeping bag in the open. I smugly thought myself stronger for the experience of having been on the hill the previous night and thought those shocked faces would learn when they tried for the summit. Of course they wouldn't though as your not allowed to do what i did if you are in a group, your only allowed to do it if you have control of what you want to do. If you give that up to a group leader to keep you safe that is exactly what you will be kept and the adventure is sanitised.

That morning i bumped into the other group i had got to know on the mountain. They had all come down after a summit attempt on new years day. They had got up at sunrise and all made it to independencia but were getting cold. The wind was strong though no stronger than the previous night. Half had turned back there the other half had made it to the gran accerro and turned back as the wind picked up on the exposed section. I talked to a few of the people, some accepted it as bad weather stopping them and being unlucky. One guy was furious, he had been held up for 3 breaks while people caught up. In those breaks he had got cold and then the decision to go for the summit was taken away from him as the group was turned around. I felt for him as he would almost certainly have made the summit but wasn't able to as the group stopped him.

I'm now back in mendoza eating big steaks and drinking copious amounts of beer which is only fair. I'm still slightly gutted that i didn't make the peak for sunrise which would have been pretty cool but definately feel like i have been on an adventure which is what it was supposed to be about. And i managed to get off a mountain without having to carry dead bodies which is a big step forward from kilimanjaro. Now if i can just find something more technical to do then we could really get into this mountaineering. I think Bolivia, Peru or Equador when the winter season starts could have some pretty exciting times. But first patagonia lets see what beautiful places we can find there first.

Hope everything is good back at home
laters
alex

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Photos

sunrise from bivvy
sunrise from bivvy new years day from 6600m.

aconcagua from the roadhead
South face of aconcagua from the park entrance

sunset confluencia
sunset at confluencia

sunset pyramid yellow
each night at plaza de mulas the sunset changed the colour of cerro pyramid above the camp, through yellow, orange red and purple absolutely amazing

sunset pyramid orange
each night at plaza de mulas the sunset changed the colour of cerro pyramid above the camp, through yellow, orange red and purple absolutely amazing

sunset pyramid red
sunset on cerro pyramid red phase

sunset pyramid finished
each night at plaza de mulas the sunset changed the colour of cerro pyramid above the camp, through yellow, orange red and purple absolutely amazing

penitentes
penitentes at plaza de mulas

peak bonete
Me at the peak of bonete

view from bonete
view from peak of bonete looking south

route up cathedral
glacier on cathedral went to top should have gone left on gully

horcones valley
View of horcones valley, the way into aconcagua from the top of glacier on cathedral

sunset at canada
sunset from canada

sunset new years eve
sunset new years eve on way to berlin

gran accerro
THe trail that took me 4 hours but is only about 1 km long

aconcagua shadow
shadow of aconcagua from bivvy at sunrise

sunrise from bivvy 2
sunrise from bivvy 2

Comments

[Chris]

Congrats!
Well done for the peak Al - sounds like a nightmare, but as we both know, it can only have been hanging on to the story that got you through!! The only question i have though is have you grown a goaty (pic 9)?

[Mr T.]

errr.....
Good to see you alive and well Mr B. Fantastic photos, you are so obviously struggling out there, i'll be expecting you back any moment then!!!! enjoy sir,