The valley....

"The Moon surprises people." So a search and rescue team commander once told me.

On the Eighth Continent Marathon, in that airless desert, surprises weren't welcome.

Half the internet was riding my helmet camera. Commentators periodically bugged me for breathless sound bites. I love the fans, really. But halfway through the climb out of Schroter valley - which exhausted me into hearing things last year - wasn't the time to deal with:

"Mike! MTV! How's the weather?"

Legs burning, I still had the energy to wonder: Sarcasm, retard, or wrong web address?

It wasn't the moment to trip over. Which I did.

Face down in the lunar dust, my foot had the hot/numb feel of something broken. Worse, I'd just sworn on a show my daughter watched. So now Jenny would skin me.

Lying prone, I twisted to see what'd tripped me.......

I’d tripped over a head.

Someone was yelling on the line. Desiccated heads, in half crushed helmets, probably aren’t family viewing.

I hope they cut the connection before, pointing, I screamed: "Fuuuu-! Head!!"

Not my coolest moment.

*

Rescue will take hours. Schroter valley wall isn't exactly accessible.

I give my new friend a cairn of pale lunar stone. The yellowed photograph I found - looks like a shot of his home town - is in his hand.

My guess: He arrived a hundred years ago, in some cold war stunt. Lander wouldn't restart. He climbed the valley, to die with a view.

Set off a rock slide, and had his memory ignored.

Good call though - the climb. The distant ground is silver anorthosite and black basalt. Green, volcanic glass, 'berries' are strewn all about. Earth in the sky.

Stunning.

I wonder about the voices I heard last year.....

The Moon surprised me.

Image above: The Aristarchus plain, with the bright Aristarchus crater in the foreground, and Schroter valley snaking behind it. Courtesy of Mikes Astronomy and Astrophotography.