The problem is this cornice all the way up there and how I’m gonna get over this, over this lip and all the way down to there. It’s a 60-foot drop to the bottom and the overhanging ledges can collapse easily. Probably my best way of doing this is just to traverse along this snow bank and I need to be careful. If you see down there, it looks like a leaf. It might well be a cliff dropping straight off that. You’ve got to be really careful doing this without crampons and without an ice axe or rope. It just means that you’ve got to be very certain of every foothold that you take. I start edging across. 

 

The team is standing by in case I slip. But even so, I’ve got to be so careful here. I’m out of the icy bit of this now. And it’s just a last hold shoot down into the cave. I love this, mates. 

 

This isn’t a cave. It’s actually a funnel. You can say so. It’s open in the bottom. But these things are formed. What happens is melt water comes down the glacier. And because water is warmer than the ice, it creates this. It’s like tunnels running under the glacier. When they get bigger, they grow into this sort of thing. I don’t want to hang around, hang around in this. See a lot of that? It is blue ice as well. And that’s the older sort of ice and it’s also the most dangerous. It’s most likely to crack. 

 

Blue ice is as hard as steel but it’s also as brittle as glass. And because glaciers are constantly moving, collapse is a common. Now you see, look, you follow this up, and actually you see a bit of it where it’s flaked off. And you imagine what else you’re gonna do if it drops on top of you. Last year, a climber was in an ice cave just like this. And 150-ton slab sheared off. He stood no chance to survive.