As most folk I have 'inflicted' my French language 'skills' on would would agree, I'm not exactly a natural linguist and picked up basic sign language a lot quicker than I would have picked up basic Japanese! Pretty quickly Yasuyuki and I were able to communicate the essentials of Antarctic mountaineering quite effectively. What time does the sun hit camp? How many layers to climb / sleep in? What are the names of all those fantastic peaks out there? Which of these delicious frozen Norweigan cooked meals do you fancy for dinner?

Like most expedition peaks the communication required on Vinson summit day isn't terribly subtle. Keep walking, slowly - for 50 minutes, stop for 5, drink, eat, pee, drink again, adjust clothing and go. Repeat to summit with stops less frequent on descent.

We kept this rhythm up fairly stoically untill near the summit ridge, about 6 hours after leaving high camp. Yasuyuki was stalling a little and I huffed rather impatiently and brought the rope in, thinking - this is only 25 minutes after our last stop - we'll lose our rhythm, man. At this point our thus far effective communication process seemed to be failing us and I really couldn't quite work out what the problem was. I thought I'd better have a look at Yasuyuki's eyes as they are often a good give away as to how folk are fairing on a big summit day. I got tired but bright eyes looking back and almost even a smile before I realised the insides of his goggles were completely matted with thick, opaque ice.