The most important day of our trip was here, the Island Peak summit day! The day before, our brave guide set up a new line for us to keep us away from the dangerous rock falls. The tradeoff though was a much longer technical and long climb before the summit. We were woken up at 12:30am to get ready to depart before 1:30am. I was woken up to not only a wake-up call but also continuous coughing. I was coughing somewhat before due to the dry air and dirt. Now on the most important day of the entire trek, I could barely make a sound without coughing. At least I could still breath, so off we went.
We walked and climbed and climbed some more through the night. Finally, at 5:15 we reached the crampon point at around 5800m. At this point, we needed to put on all of our climbing gears to get ready for the final push. My coughing had gone worse despite the coughing pill that my guide gave me. It started to wear on my energy and the muscles in my chest. Luckily my guides and teammates were patient. We went by crevasses and did a little ice climbing before we reached the long ladder. This ladder had turn away many climbers before us. But it excited me. This is exactly why I chose this peak over the higher Mera peak, to do something challenging, and to at least feel like a mountaineer doing mountaineering things.
(A relatively long and exciting ladder crossing. All three climbers and two guides in our group crossed the ladder without any incident.)
What we imagined the last 300m of technical climbing turned out to be way more technical than any of us thought. With changing weather conditions and global warming, the ice wall had become much more jagged and difficult to climb. Without any prior experience with crampons, I struggled mightily. Bruises were forming on my legs as I got swung to the wall several times from losing my footing (thanks to the fixed line and Chetam from saving my life here!). Thankfully, I was too tired to feel them.
And after 7 hours and 45 minutes, we had finally arrived at the summit! A glorious moment especially after coughing non-stop the entire ascend. Really could not have done it without my teammates and guides. They were very patient with me throughout the climb. Special thanks to my mountain guide, Chetam(I may have spelled it wrong), who went out to fix the lines the day before so we were free from falling rocks!
We then spent five hours descending back down to our base camp. After that, a long long nap to commemorate the day.