Eyton-Jones and Kershaw made a return to their landing site, Case Balocchi locating a guide who took them to Monte Cusna, a mountain range. Unlike the 50 British soldiers, the guide was equipped with skis, sticks and snow goggles, an offer to look for supplies for their unit was refused by Eyton-Jones as he knew they needed too many. It took a day to reach the Rifugio mountain hut. On noticing the door was difficult to open they realised that snow had drifted into the hut through a grate on the eastern wall. The fire had been incapacitated and there were no logs to burn anyway, so they ate self heating tins of soup and laid their sleeping bags on top of the snow pile, keeping their boots on. During the night their sleeping bags melted the snow and they sank into the pit, creating the illusion that they were in graves. They took an amphetamine pharmaceutical called Benzedrine in tablet form. Eyton-Jones suffered Photokeratitis, a temporary blindness caused by sunlight reflecting from the snow. Eyton-Jones and Kershaw concluded that the mountain escape route was too challenging to be functional for the British to use as an escape route. They descended the mountain by sliding on their backsides. Kershaw's bobsleigh experience meant he went first, using his heels to steer between boulders. They reached relatively flat ground and recognised that their feet were black and one of Kershaw's feet had been injured by colliding with a boulder.