9 August 2012 (Great Trango Tower, Pakistan)

When you’ve got friends attempting to perform crazy antics in the far corners of the Karakorum range, and your phone rings with an 88 country code your heart tends to skip a beat and you can’t help but pray it’s not bad news. So when Tim Emmett’s perpetually cheerful voice came on the other end of the line, it didn’t really matter what news he passed on as long as it included the phrase, “Everybody’s fine.”

Thank God. Now for the details…

Tim Emmett: “We’re at the top of Trango right now. We’ve been climbing hard for the past 12 or 14 hours and we just can’t reach the exit point. We’re totally wasted and the weather’s deteriorating. We hate to say it but … Game over.”

Aaaarrghhhh. While we’re all happy that the crew is all OK, you can’t help but feel a bit disappointed that after all the hard work over the past year that the team was unable to meet their objective of making the first ever wingsuit flight from the top of Great Trango Tower. Unfortunately they are unable to try again because they have a flight to catch in Islamabad and a lot of difficult ground to cover before they get there.

Our phone call was cut short before we could get any more info but we’re assuming the plan is to descend to advanced base camp, spend the night, then break camp and descend to base camp the next day. By the time they hit base camp, the porters should have arrived from Askole and the cooks should have most of the camp broken down so that all that needs to be done is to stand around for half a morning while the porters weigh the loads and then head off for a looooooong walk back to Askole, a hardcore jeep trip to Skardu, and finally two days’ bus ride down the Karakorum Highway to Islamabad.

We’ll keep you posted on the trip back to Islamabad and in the meantime we wish the team the best of luck on their long journey home.