Oh dear god... Only 7 days to go!!!

1 week to go. Hardly a good time to start panicking. So I wont. However I'm making no promises for tomorrow.. To be honest, I think we have most things covered, we have all our gear (by all I mean most or at the very least some), Conor is looking after the dollars and Ash is looking after the snack bars. Myself and Sullie have adopted a moral high ground at this stage and plan to stay there until our bluff is called. The only thing we don't have at this point is a clue! Also I think I should mention that I hate lists, hate them with a passion understood by only by a few. A few that also happen to be heavily sedated and coincidentally, heavily incarcerated! I would go as far as to say I feel violated by lists. Which is why I refuse to make one and is also the reason, not totally unrelated I suppose, why I will undoubtedly find myself going 'ah F*#k' at -20deg!

Not much to report on last Sundays climb, it was another trip back to Carrantuohill. Ash was unable to join us because he had a dose of, wait for it... VERTIGO!!! Only our group could go to the highest point in Africa and get vertigo before we even leave!!! Conor missed out as he was on the piss, a far more noble and believable excuse!!! So it was left to myself and Sullie to further explore the hills of Ireland. The weather was meant to be sunny, it was not. It was then meant to clear by early morning, it did not. All this was revised to clearing up around 3pm, it, you guessed it did not. If Met Eireann had any interest in accuracy it would have said that the weather in Carrantuohill will clear up at the exact time Mark & Sullie get down from the top. But it does not have any interest in accuracy, which is also the same level of interest it reserves for forecasting the weather.
We headed off at 10am under cloud cover and headed for the lake an American WW2 plane had crashed into in 1943. Apparently you can still see the wing on a clear day. Today we could barely see the lake never mind the wing. So we continued our climb to the top of the peak next to the lake with the plan of following the ridge line across to the Devils Ladder where we would descend, or get off the bloody mountain as I like to call it. I insisted on frequent map checks as I was after all with Sullie. His previous escapades on this mountain are well documented. But to be fair to him he got us to the top without too many life threatening detours. At the top we met another group who had come around from the opposite side of the lake. Very experienced looking, one guy was even ex-RAF. They told us that to get to Devils Ladder we should head back more or less the way we came, we nodded and agreed but once they were gone Sull was out with map and compass. So after a quick bit of something involving twisting the compass and the map and a little bit of maths and just a smidgen of guess work he got back on his feet shouted 'RAF my arse' and guided us off in the RIGHT direction. At which point the cloud cleared and we could see where we were going. To be honest up to the cloud parting I was slightly doubtful!!!
That was about it for Sunday. 7 days to go, ah bugger that's only 5 to the flights. Time to go shopping..... Or maybe even training.... Or maybe just to sleep!