Page 257 - Demo

253hundred feet but I had no energy and really struggled to put one foot in front of another. The QFI with us, who was a smoker did not even try. Eventually I struggled to the top absolutely exhausted. How people get up Everest without oxygen is quite beyond me. Although because we had little time we had not properly accustomed ourselves to the lack of oxygen at 16350 ft. The first thing I did when I got back to Linton was to climb to that height in a JP and spin down.After taking a few photos and having a good look round we went back to the hut, picked up our kit and set off down a track to get back to where we were going to be picked up the next day. As we lost height everyone%u2019s strength returned and we made good progress down the path. The biggest problem was the wildlife. One of the most dangerous animals is the water buffalo. They are unpredictable. We found one standing in the middle of the path we eventually walked slowly by it and it trotted away. Perhaps scared by the light aluminium tent pole that one of the lads was holding! On the way up we had seen a couple of lions about 1 kilometre away. They were just walking along but we were aware that there was no barrier between them and us. You are not allowed to take any weapons into the park and all we had was a couple of ice axes. We watched them for a while but they just carried on their way. We eventually reached the campsite at the edge of the National Park. In fact it was just a cleared area and judging by the amount of water buffalo poo the animals did not know that we were now outside the park. There were no facilities but I think that we may have had to pay a small fee. The warden who spoke to us was wandering around with a 303 enfield rifle which did not give us much confidence of how safe the campsite was. Anyway, we built a fire and sat around it for a bit. When the wood had burnt down, no-one was very keen to go back into the forest to get more so we snuggled into our 4 ounce ripstop tents and hoped for the best. I don%u2019t know how much sleep anyone got but all night the screeches of animals in the wood was extraordinary. I was