Scroll: each ridge moves at its own speed.
We left the hut at five, while the valley was still blue. By the second switchback the sun had cleared the far ridge and the snowfields turned the colour of ember.
Ines kept the pace honest. Malik stopped every twenty minutes to log the temperature, which dropped two degrees for every three hundred metres we climbed.
Above the tree line the path thins to cairns. From there it is an hour of scree, a short ridge walk, and the summit book in its tin box.