Yeesh

Tired, very very tired.

I spent the first night up the mountain last night and it was not too bad. The weather is quite warm at the moment and it was a clear moonlit night so the journey up the hill wasn't too challenging. Rather than taking a short cut through the woods, which involves trudging through waist deep snow, traversing cliff tops and a lot of climbing, I took the long way along a foot path. Unfortunately the path was like just a sheet of ice, people have been skiing down it and the snow has been melting in the sun during the day then freezing at night. It was like walking on an ice rink. A very steep ice rink, fortunately I was wearing snowboard boots which don't have the best grip and my centre of gravity was somewhere up around my shoulders because of the massive rucksack I was carrying. Nevertheless I got up the hill without falling, often, and then made it to my new home with very little in the way of traumas.

I was quite pleased to find that all the ice had melted from the bed I had previously made from branches and moss. It was such a nice night; I’m guessing around 0 degrees centigrade, that I just got into my sleeping bag under the stars. I didn’t sleep so well, first the moonlight kept me awake, and then it was hard to get comfortable sleeping on a hard lumpy bed. Eventually I did get to sleep and was only woken up whenever I rolled on to my injured shoulder. By the small hours the temperature had dropped to about, I guess, -8 so I would occasionally wake from the cold.

This morning was fantastic, I got up, had a frozen cheese sandwich and some cold tea for breakfast and then, having decided in the night that I didn’t like where I was sleeping so decided to move house. Or rather I found a flat bit of ground and attempted to make an igloo on it. I’ve never made an igloo before, it turns out that there is a bit of a knack to it. I didn’t start working out what this knack is until I was about half way through so as a result the base level is not as strong as the top. I think I’ll sleep outside again tonight and see if the “igloo” is still standing in the morning.