By Tom Padgham. For routes and climbing info on Kwangde, see Alan's Mountaineering Report

The attempt on Kwangde Nup. It is about 5 a.m. and Alan says he feels terrible. He has had a bad stomach all night. We start out with one sherpa (Pasang) at 6 a.m. and we are only five minutes from camp when Alan vomits. Rather surprisingly, he decides to continue and see how he feels! After another ten minutes he decides to turn back - sensible decision.

For some bizarre reason, I decide to continue as a rope of two with Pasang. We make the start of the glacier in one and a half hours and rope up. Pasang does not want the lead gear, so he obviously thinks it is going to be easy. The first 25m of the glacier is quite steep on hard ice, but then we come onto the broad expanse of the main glacier which makes for easy walking. We are lucky with conditions - no deep snow and a clear blue sky.

Sherpa Pasang on Kwangde Photo © Tom Padgham 1998

We make rapid progress up the left side of the glacier which brings us to the Junction. We are at about 5700m and it looks as though the next 300m vertically to the top will be a tortuous route through and around crevasses. The views are absolutely breathtaking.

We head right as the left hand side turns into 100m high ice cliffs. We come to the first technical climbing which is a steep 10m pitch to gain the top side of a crevasse. There is an exposed step out left halfway up and I lose my confidence as I only have one ice axe making the move awkward. I shout to Pasang to belay me from an ice screw (he has already climbed the pitch). I manage to get the axe in my left hand and fumble my way out and up - rather unnerving.

Twenty metres further up, there is a nasty little ice pitch of about 10m. I belay Pasang this time and he has two axes, but places no protection on the way up (even though I gave him the lead gear!). He passes the spare axe down on the rope and I am off. Halfway up there is a kink to the right and the ice is very hard making axe and crampon placements hard work. My energy is sapped quickly as there is little oxygen up here at 5800m and my feeble swings make little impact. Placements are eventually found and I struggle to the top.

We now head up towards a step in the glacier which looks fairly impassable as I am not into overhanging ice! Pasang has spotted the easiest bit. I belay him as he creeps along underneath the overhang to reach a slightly overhanging, one move section which takes him onto the upper shelf. I follow tentatively. At the crux, I slam in two solid axe placements above the overhang and basically haul myself up to a position where I can get some footholds and then make the next axe placement. All goes well and I get an immense feeling of relief and satisfaction as I stagger onto the top shelf.

We snake our way around crevasses to the next steep part. Pasang points out a vertical step up a crevasse, but I say it is too difficult. We move further round and find a small steep step across the crevasse. At the top of this section, we reach the lip of a large crevasse. It is at least 10m wide but there is a snow bridge which goes down into the crevasse and back up the other side at an angle to the left. This means we cannot see how it finishes.

It is about midday. There is approximately 100m vertical to the summit. Pasang asks if I want to try it out. Of course I want to get to the summit, but time and unknown dangers persuade me to turn back. I feel I do not have enough experience to go exploring through crevasse fields at 5900m. So back down we go. At the time, I was not annoyed that we were not going to get to the summit, but now I wish I had as the summit was so tantalisingly close. However, it was definitely the right decision.

It soon starts to snow lightly. I keep both axes for the decent and somehow Pasang manages to get down the steep stuff with only one axe! Down-climbing ice is not nice, but I feel reasonably secure as Pasang is belaying me from above on the hard pitches.

The decent is uneventful and we make high camp by 3 p.m. Kami, the cook, has gone to 'base camp', so we pack up and follow him. We get to base camp at 4.20 p.m., but there is no-one there. Arrrggghhh - another 800m descent in one and a half hours before it gets dark. We arrive at Lumding Kharka at 6.30 p.m. in pitch black having been ushered across the river by the porters holding bamboo torches. The rest of the team have cleared off to Lukla. I am shattered after spending 12 hours on the go, completing 1000m ascent and 2000m descent.