Jim and I eat and drink and prepare our next push. Six days of action have taken their toll on our supplies of hill food. Our gear is hammered. I chop up a 9mm rope to make slings to replace those of ours left on Inominata and in the retreat from Poincenot. They're heavy and bulky, but they'll do. I'm happily sawing rope with a steak knife when Doug and Rolo tromp back into camp.

Doug and Rolo have been relaxing in base camp while Jim and I were up on the ledge, and their sights are set on Tehuelche, a 46 pitch route done on the North Face of Fitzroy by an Italian team a decade ago. Rolo has dreamed of this route since he stole the original route topo from Park Headquarters when he was 16. The Italians fixed rope to within a few hundred feet of the summit in a siege campaign that lasted an entire season. The route has not had a second ascent, but Doug and Rolo plan to knock off Tehuelche in an overnighter.

I can't sleep and I listen to kernels of graupel snow beating against the tent. When I look out of the tent flap, clouds hang over Fitzroy, Poincenot and St. Exupery, and snow falls from them on our camp, but there are no clouds over the Torres - more weird weather. I've invested six months of my life and $13,000 in this range and I still have no clue what the weather is going to do next. It snows all night, but the wind doesn't blow.

Cup of Joe Anyone?

At 4 a.m. the strange clouds dissipate and I fire the stove, heating water. Jim groans. We're out of coffee. I find a few grit-covered tea bags in a corner of the tent. Once Jim's going he's unstoppable, but it is essential to ply him with caffeine to fire his engines.

We depart five minutes after Doug and Rolo head up Sitting Man Ridge on the long approach to the north face of Fitzroy. A massive snow gully, two fifth-class pitches, a long, exposed snow traverse, another fifth-class step, and a mad dash up and across a defile threatened by a hanging glacier separate us from the base of Poincenot's North Face. Yet another gut check for Jim and I with this 1300 meter elevation gain. It is our seventh consecutive day in the fray.

After several hours of step-kicking and scrambling we pause to drink warm tea and munch chocolate bars. Fortified, we crampon up a long, rising snow traverse. Jim is ahead of me, kicking steps under a heavy load. He's 53 years old and forging upwards. I'm 30 and my thighs are burning.