Footprints on the Snow

We hit the first slush on the trip early on. Day Two. This scared a few members of the group - me included. We then walked on solid ice. Crunch, crunch, crunch. How do you trust it won't crack and you disappear with your sledge pulling you down, down down? You just have to trust. We walked in a line. Occasionally, someone would turn around and say, 'Big hole there!' and you'd walk around a dip in the ice. Once or twice, or maybe three times, I fell down into the ice up to my knee. Thankfully, the ice didn't get into my boots - or I might have got a frostbitten toe. Ouch! Even so, it took your breath away every time it happened. I was then advised to walk in someone else's footprints so I started doing this - when we were on the sort of snow you could see foortprints. Being the smallest in the group, I had trouble keeping up with old Big Foot - whoever he was. He certainly had long legs and big feet! However, there is something VERY reassuring about walking in someone else's footprints - or snowprints. Once I built up some confidence in simply walking on ice I looked around me at the scenery. Breathtaking - is the only word I can use to describe it. My sunglasses steamed up, so I peered out over them. It was like I had suddenly been transported to the Ice Age - and we were the remaining survivors - struggling to find civilisation. Okay, it may sound dramatic, but after walking for ten hours a day I found my imagination did get carried away. The guide book said we would 'encvounter many remainders of the ice age and its continuing efects' so it wasn't just my imagination. We saw glaciers, rock debris spread across the valley floor, all types of moraines, boulders...and lots more. I was looking around in awe trying to memorise the landscape and think of ways of describing it. Then, when I missed my step and fell flat on the ice, I realised I had to concentrate on walking on all the different sorts of ice and snow we encountered. Inside my head I was singing that Police song, Every Breath You Take: 'Every breath you take, Every move you make, Every bond you break, Every step you take, Ill be watching you...' Other people said they sang to themselves too. Maybe it had something to do with the rhythm of walking? Maybe I was going mad?