Guides: Mike Pond, Dustin Byrne, Alan Rousseau
Climbers: Garry McMahon (UK), Roy Cursley (UK), Kayla Cooper (Washington), Damon Vincent (Missouri), Greg Lamarche (UK), Margaret St. Hill (Australia), Vijay Kumar (New Jersey), Christine Burke (Australia)
Mike Pond called May 8th at 11:18pm PST with the following dispatch: Hi all, I’m happy to report we have successfully reached Camp 1. (dah, dah-dah-dah Imagine Mike making dramatic triumphant music here) It was awesome, we had a beautiful day with pretty much the best conditions we could have asked for on any given day. We had hard packed powder snow which made travelling our route today very bearable. It was a sunny day that was almost a little too warm. Totally awesome!!!
We just watched a spectacular sunset over the mountains, it was quite nice. We got a good forecast, so we’re psyched. Kinda’ wishing we were up where Team 1 is now; but I guess there are high winds coming. Hopefully that doesn’t hold Team 1 back too much.
We had “Mediterranean Surprise” for dinner and Oreos for dessert. The Oreos had both vanilla and chocolate crackers, that was particularly entertaining. We’re psyched to do a cache tomorrow and keep working our way up the mountain. Next we will head up ski hill and make a cache near Kahiltna Pass.
Everybody on the team is looking super strong and carrying heavy loads and such. There are no other messages to report. You guys keep it classy!