Sestra would be climbing ahead of me. If I’d taken the lead we’d still be at the base of the wall now. She slammed one of her small pickaxes into the wall. She was stronger than she looked, for the tool was stuck fast. Then she kicked at the wall, the point of her specially adapted left boot securing her to the sheet of ice. Hoisting herself off the ground so that her right foot was now dangling, she kicked out at the wall again, but this time so that her right boot would impale the ice at a higher level than her left.
Now she was off the ground, albeit only about fifty centimetres. She took the second pickaxe and stretched up, burying it in the wall. She was now “attached” to the wall at four points. Wiggling her left foot free she then drove it into the wall at a higher level than her r
