The days passed: they do not know any more very well since how long they left. They arrived at camp 2 the day before at the evening, in a snowstorm.
One of the guides had preceded them to set up in the urgency a tent so that they can take refuge there quickly. This time, they had been afraid. Exhausted, the face pricked by the hail, the tip of the fingers already painful , wiping their mask covered by snow, staggering of tiredness, they had searched for the tent during minutes which had appeared an eternity to them. They already imagined themselves frozen .
When the guide had appeared few meters of them, they had known that they could put an end to this nightmare. All huddled ones against the others, it had taken to them several hours before feeling blood again circulating at the tip of their fingers. The mountain had taken another dimension, that none of them with his weak experiment knew. 
The next morning, the sky is limpid and they can see the Glacier of the Poles upon them. They know that they cannot move back any more. There is not other alternative that to remain in the tent to regain forces or to continue to go up. They choose to take the progression again, without respecting the day of rest, in spite of their tetanized muscles, in spite of their state of tiredness, in spite of the load of 20 kilos they have to carry. Some of them already start to count the days separating them from a bed and a shower.
At the camp 3, at 6000m approximately, they wait one day, then a second one that the gusts of frozen wind stop so that they can try the rise of the summit. But the mountain decides differently. The wind come on worse during the night, transforming them into desarticulated puppets in their tents which cannot any more shelter them. Then the guides take the only decision it should be taken: to go down... (to be continued)
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