After having chopped a ledge to sleep on, we wanted to get something to drink and my climbing partner got out the stove. Unfortunately, he dropped our only gas canister while pulling the stove out of his pack!
We watched in silence as the canister was bouncing off the rocks and then disappeared into the void.
Neither of us said a word for about five minutes as we just kept staring after the canister. We had already decided that this face was a one-way trip up and down the backside of the mountain, because the gear was so bad that we did not think it would be possible to rappel the face.

We did not sleep much that night, not so much because of the cold and thirst, but because we were really nervous about the descent the next day.
Obviously, we made it down, but it was the trickiest descent I have experienced as the ice was brittle and airy and the cracks were very thin and shallow. I believe we left all of our knifeblades and had to tie off every single ice screw we had as the ice wasn't even good enough for abalakov anchors!
Of course we found the gas canister at the base of the climb when we got down, but by then our brains were fried and all we wanted was to go home...

This is how Ueli and Freddie dealt with this climb:
[Click to View YouTube Video]