The wind whistles and moans around the tent, and the fabric flaps like a torn Tesco bag in a hurricane. It’s making such a racket I can’t sleep. I switch on my head torch. The white beam picks out tiny ice crystals in the blackness, blown in through the vents and gently raining down on my sleeping bag. It’s a bit creepy. Despite all the shaking, slapping and flapping, there’s a kind of eerie, background silence outside, an emptiness that your senses detect beneath the wind. There isn’t another living thing on this glacier tonight – not a bird nor an insect; no rabbits, mice, polar bears or Arctic foxes. No Yeti, as far as I know. I turn off the torch and pull the sleeping bag tight around my woolly hat. For the thousandth time, my mind runs through the Emergency Evacuation Plan.
It’s unlikely the tent will be blown away. Not entirely, anyway. I brought some rocks up with me from the lava field below, six boulders the size and weight of bowling balls, and stuck them into the corners of my ground sheet
In that case, my only option would be the car.
Yes, the car, parked right there, outside my tent. You know that feeling, when you go on a long winter walk and get caught out by the weather? That sense of relief, when you get back in the car, all soggy and cold, and close the door? Well, compared to my dark little dome, the Land Rover’s interior would be like a pristine, high-tech escape pod if I climbed in there now – warm and dry and glowing with light, completely impervious to the 70mph winds and the -20 degree windchill. With the rear seats folded flat, there’s even a six-foot bed in the back, and a panoramic glass roof – I could lie there and look up, waiting for the Northern Lights! I fall into a fitful sleep, thinking (with a sob): ‘Right now, that Land Rover’s the only friend I’ve got.’