Denali Team 4: May 30 – June 19, 2010
Guides: Dylan Taylor, Jeremy Ellison, Tom Kirby
Climbers: Paul Hameister, Martin Perry, Tim Myall, Andy Sweet, Brian Plaugher, Jay Jackson, Dimitri Nichiporov, Respicius Baitwa, and Siggi Soleyjarson.
Dylan Taylor called and talked to us at 5:41 pm, Pacific time on Tuesday, June 8th, and provided the following update.
Today was a rest day here at Camp 3 at 14,000 feet. Everyone is healthy and ready to move forward And everyone is still very psyched for getting up this mountain! Today gave us a chance to acclimatize a bit better and to rest.
We spent some time improving the snow walls around our tents, and we also did some fixed line practice. Tomorrow we hope to be on the fixed lines going up the face of the West Buttress to put in a cache at 16,200. We will then return here for another night before hopefully re-ascending the buttress and moving up to the 17,200 camp.
It’s been snowing off and on all day today, It would snow for a while, then the sun would come out and it would get pretty hot. Then it would cloud in and snow some more and keep repeating itself. We look forward to a full clearing so we can get some good views of Foraker and all the other peaks that surround us.
Camp 3 is turning in to a small city as we enter the very middle of the climbing season on Denail. We could use an urban planner up here to plan the walkways better that go between the various camps, to the latrine, etc. OK, an urban planner must take one of the slots on next year’s May 30th expedition!
We’ll listen in to Angela’s Team 3 tonight and see what kind of progress they made today. That’s all the news from here. We forgot to thank you yesterday for passing on the comments from Ryana and Rachel to Andy and Jay. Great to get the messages!.