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No answer. Gunther gazed down into the gully, but the gully was empty.

 'Gunther! Climb when you're ready!' I shouted again. The voice snapped him out of his reverie.

 I was standing in a little niche out of the fall line and peered cautiously around the arrete. I waited until Gunther arrived. We were battle weary now, tired and worn out but still strung out, tense and nervous. I moved off again, hesitantly at first, down rock steps, gullies and loose blocks.

 The terrain was steeper now and did not look as if it was getting any easier. How far was it to the glacier now? Then, quite suddenly, the climbing seemed easy and safe, like in a dream.

 'I've climbed this thing before,' I said to Gunther.

 'You can't have done.'

 'This bit exactly. I know where every hold is.'

'Impossible.'

 'I climbed it exactly the same way last time I did it.'

 'I'm telling you we've never been here before.'

 'Then it must have been somewhere else. I don’t know where. Maybe on another mountain. But I have climbed this pitch before, I'm sure of it.'

 'You can't have done.'

 But the feeling of being on a familiar route persisted. I was surprised at the way the moves seemed to flow automatically, as if I had committed the sequences to memory or replayed them over and over again in my dreams. My guardian angel was with me again.