cultural experiences
rope and descended down, over the snow, into the
depths of the cave. At the bottom were a number of
beautiful, cloudy-white stalagmites and stalactites,
grown from the moisture of the cave. Looking back
towards the entrance there was only a wall of snow
and ice, a rope, and the brightness of the daylight
streaming in through a small opening fifty meters
above.
consist primarily of the twin thoughts of “everything
hurts” and “almost there”. Once we reached the
bottom we collected as a group and waited for the
bus. Shortly after eight in the evening we returned
to camp.
After lunch we began trekking southward across
a landscape that was now mostly snow and rock.
We were varyingly hot or cold, as the sun, which
had arrived at the center of the sky, was concealed
and revealed again and again by the intermittent
cloud cover. We came at last to the entrance of
a valley flanked by mountain peaks on all sides
covered in slippery, wet snow. Here, a little tired
and a lot cold, we found that there was no longer
a path for us to take. We could have stumbled and
crawled on hands and knees up the snowy mountainsides, but that would only have delayed the
inevitability of our return. The summit