It may have been a small step to Joel, but to a rock-climbing novice like me, it required a leap of faith to expect one spike on my crampon to support my weight as I clung like a limpet to a four-metre wall of sheer, icy rock.
Watching Jacob draw was a bit like watching a climber on a sheer rockface, slowly trying out one crampon and then another, looking for a foothold, advancing a couple of feet and then spending the night on the rockface in his bag, upright — albeit a climber engaged in a steady conversation with a friend on the lost art of true rock climbing.
Equipment such as an ice ax, harness, rope, helmet, ice screw, rock pitons, snow pickets, crampon, carabiners, belay device, tap sling, quick draws, map, compass, G.P.S., headlamp, water bottle, first-aid kit, bivouac sack and extra layers.
But this time, perched on crampon front points and the blades of two of those MacInnes ice hammers and with half the climb below me, I met my nemesis: one of those streams of snow crystals rose in intensity in a way that none of the others had.
Smacking an axe into the ice and stepping up on a crampon spike, I hauled myself up the frozen waterfall one final time; at last I was out of the sunless ravine.
Surprisingly for the layman, the struggle of their ascent is felt in the pit of the stomach, even if you don't know a bivouac from a crampon.
The most dangerous moment of his life the moment after which, he said, he felt privileged to remain alive at all saw him dangling on the 7,000-foot 7,000-footace of the North Wall of the Eiger, no crampons on his boots, with the surface continually melting in the sun and rocks cascading past him.
A large quantity of the litter of past climbers tons of items such as tents, cans, crampons, and human waste has been hauled down from the mountain and recycled or discarded.
All these achievements were carried out without the help of modern mountaineering equipment, without ropes, crampons, or oxygen supplies; hence, Humboldt and Bonpland suffered badly from mountain sickness.
You need a rope and crampons to scale the stats mountain he compiled, which at his time of going is cricket's third highest batting peak, measuring more than 13,000 runs at an average of 52.
It is more daunting, but still manageable, in the colder season, when crampons are necessary to reach the 4,167m summit.
