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From Lari we headed up over the tops to get on the northen side of Mismi. We had ten days worth of food with us, which we had on a couple of tiny donkeys. These were owned by our guide, Feliciano, a tiny man who walked everywhere in his sandals made from recycled tractor tyres.

After two days easy walking we located the “perfect base-camp” at the foot of the crags where the source is located. Ed has written about the two visits to the source.

Summit was yesterday, 25th April. All four of us (Ed, Feliciano, Oswaldo and I) left camp at 06.40, bang on time, one hour forty minutes late. We were camped at 4990m and therefore, only had 610m to go. As usual I set the slowest pace with heart wanting to burst through my chest and my lungs wanting to leap out of my mouth. Ed was by far the stronger one out of the two of us – it was almost comical, you could picture the scene…as I slowly pushed forward, Ed and the two guides would wait further ahead sympathetically. Ed would start doing press-ups, throwing Oswaldo on his back for extra weight. As I would get closer Ed would ask, whilst doing star jumps, “how you doing Luke?”
“Fine,” I’d reply through gritted teeth, carefully swallowing back down my lungs as they tried to escape.
“Cool, lets go!” Ed would grab Oswaldo above his head, much to his dismay and run off into the distance. I’d nod and smile and promptly faint where I stood.

We approached from the North-West and walked across the base of the summit to the North-East side, kicking steps up to a col where we then headed along the ridge to the summit. At one point came up to the edge and was able to look down to the other side. He froze, as the only thing between him and the incredible drop on the other side was the fast melting snow under his feet. In true filming spirit he held his body still whist fishing out the video camera to get the shot on film.

At 11.15am we eventually summitted Nevado Mismi. It was an awesome feeling for both of us to be finally standing at the very start of our expedition. To be standing where we’d been planning for the last year and three months and had just walked over 250km to get there. After the obligatory man-hugs, photos and filming etc we sat down and had cheese and biscuits. I took this moment and phoned Katie from my mobile and we had an emotional chat.
Eventually we headed down, winding our way down to the rocks below. Our way back to base camp was to be via the source…again.

Luke