Observations placeholder

After the shouted exchange up at the Merkl Gap our situation now looked hopeless. As I made my way back over the snow slope to Gunther I was completely beside myself with desperation and bewilderment, shaking ,and stumbling as I went. I watched myself fall over several times, tearing a hole in my hand with my crampons.

It was almost as if there was a second me up there, as if I was looking down on myself from above. Perhaps I had lost my mind for a moment, lost all contact with reality. I was a split personality viewing myself in the third person, and the thing was - I did not find it at all unusual.

Wild and conflicting emotions plagued me as I stumbled along. What could we do?

I could see no way out now. I knew we were lost, doomed to die. I fell again, rolled down the slope like a bundle of rags, screamed my frustration out, then stood up and suddenly I was calm again.

I can still hear my desperate screams echoing inside my head, even today, but I no longer know why I reacted so savagely. It was as if reason had deserted me, as if all that remained was a body and its animal instincts.

 'Now it's you who is crazy’  Gunther said, and from the tone of his voice I concluded that he knew he had been acting crazy himself before.

 It snapped me out of my raging confusion; it was like waking from a terrible nightmare.