Rest Day at High Camp

It was a day of rest for the team. They called in this evening to let us know all is well at 17,200 feet. The tents are well protected behind walls of snow and the activities today revolved around reading and eating. Preparations are being made for the big push to the summit tomorrow, so stay tuned to see if tomorrow proves to be summit day. Think happy weather thoughts.

High Camp! 17,200 ft

They moved to High Camp Today at 17,200 ft!! It was a beautiful sunny day and there was hardly a breath of wind as they moved from the 14,000 ft basin up to the W. Buttress ridge, and on up to Camp 4. There are some tired climbers up there tonight, but everybody is doing well, and they'll likely get a shot at the summit in the next couple of days.

The climbing on the ridge leading into high camp is some of the most beautiful on the entire route, and they had a great day to really enjoy it.

They arrived in camp by mid-day, set up tents, melted snow for water, cooked dinner, and are settling in for the night.

Here's Chris Kerrick with the evening call!

Rest Day

Today was a day to recover and acclimate for our June 13th team. They slept in, ate a big breakfast, and then took naps. Not too bad. It was a much needed recovery day, several team members have been feeling like they might have a cold, so a day off was great. Hopefully they'll all feel better tomorrow.

It snowed about 1 1/2 feet at Camp3 last night, so they woke up to a pretty good blanket of new snow. That's summer on Denali.

Tomorrow they hope to move up to high camp at 17,200 ft.

Climb up to 16,400 ft

The team had another productive day today. They carried a load of mostly food and fuel up to about 16,400 ft. They did this to get a bit of acclimitization and to get some of the weight of their loads up on the ridge so that when they are ready to move to high camp they can save a bit of effort. Tomorrow they plan to take a full rest day to recharge, recover, and acclimate before pushing up to high camp and on for the summit. Chris said a couple of the climbers are fighting a bit of a cold, so tomorrow's rest day will be welcomed by all.

Camp 3, 14,000 ft

The team moved up to Camp 3 yesterday, and had another nice day on the mountain on Friday.

Paul called in for today's post, he does an excellent job of explaining what they are doing up there today.

Carry around Windy Corner

They had another beautiful day today and were able to carry a load of gear to 13,500 ft, just around the notorious "Windy Corner". Chris said it was anything but windy today, they had sunshine, calm weather and it was actually pretty warm up there.

Most importantly it was Pizza night tonight, always a favorite.

Here's Madhura with tonights call from Camp 2.

Beautiful Day at 11k

Chris called in this afternoon and said it's been a beautiful day. They had a relatively relaxing day today, doing what is called a "back carry". Two days ago they carried a load from Camp 1 at 7,800 ft up to about 10,500 ft near Kahiltna Pass. Yesterday they passed this cache of gear on their way up to Camp 2 at 11,200 ft. Today's job was to go back down the hill and pick up the gear. It usually takes about 15-20 minutes to walk down to the cache, and about 1-1.5 hrs to carry it all back up the hill. We use this strategy to break up the big load carrying days into 2 smaller days, and it allows the climbers to acclimate to the increasingly higher altitudes. A back carry day is really an acclimitization day with a bit of activity.

Everyone is doing great up there, and passed on a hello to Kate who is probably home by now.

Here's the evening update called in by Lance. The sat phone cut's out a bit for the last part of the call, but you can get the idea.