Guides: Andrew Yasso, Mary Harlan, Paul Rosser
Climbers: Geoff Strommer (Oregon), Jennifer Logan (UK), Paul Davies (UK), Steven Hart (Florida), David Chambers (Texas), Brian Roark (Texas), Virginia Cross (Australia), Selina Dicker (UK)
Guide Andrew Yasso called June 27th at 10:20 pm PST:
Message from an anonymous climber on the team who hijacked the phone: Dear friends and family it’s been snowing for three days and it’s not the pretty stuff of christmas cards. The enforced incarceration has brought out the best in our guides who are sharing the responsibilities of scavenging food, rescuing, and babysitting us admirably. Although, their mountain fashion can be questionable at times; shorts can be just too short sometimes.
If you haven’t already noticed we are stuck. We can’t go up and we can’t go down so we are considering hiring a chinook (helicopter) to evacuate ourselves. Whoever told us there was a bar up here was lying. Camp 14 is nothing like a ski resort and the stories of Fresh Alaskan Salmon are all lies. There are no single men here and the women are scary. Two of the group have gone stir crazy, one has become a recluse and the other three can only communicate in “UNO” language. Things got so bad two days ago we considered a cous-de-tas, however, the guides brilliantly averted this with some cheese quesadillas and hot cocoa. Denali: we are looking forward to seeing you on our descent and hopefully never seeing each other again. Lots of love team camp 3/4. P.S. don’t believe a word of Andrew’s dispatches none of us are enjoying dragging a sled up a mountain.
Andrew’s Dispatch after recovering the phone:
It looks like the weather has cleared momentarily and it doesn’t look like it has snowed as much as we thought so hopefully we will be able to descend half the mountain this afternoon while snow conditions are stable. We will build a camp half way most likely and then wait for colder temperatures to complete the trek on the lower glacier. Hopefully this plan will dissuade any further attempts of a cous and it appears I can’t control the weather but in the future I’m going to try harder. Here’s to safe travels and hopefully we’ll be talking to you soon.