Mt. McKinley (2008) - Day 13
Camp 3 to Camp 4
Mike promised a post-sunrise wake-up, but the sun definitely hadn't reached above the ridge yet. It was chilly. I guess you'd think that should be expected, since we're camping on a giant piece of ice, surrounded by snow. Whatever.
Breakfast was that granola cereal stuff or grits plus a cereal bar. Blah. Who comes up with these menus? Oh yeah, now I remember.
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We're tearing down camp. Those snow shoe anchors we used are really, really secure. We're packing up everything we're going to need at the higher two camps, and everything else (including sleds and duffles) will get cached here at Camp 3. Off to 14k we go!
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Its been really helpful so far, knowing what to expect from the climb today - since we're familiar with about 2/3rds of it, from the cache we did yesterday. Speaking of which, when we were caching yesterday we ran into this duo, Paul and Jamie, who were also doing a cache. What we remember of the group was how abusive Paul was to Jamie - yelling, "Jamie!", if he was going too fast, too slow, the wrong way, tangling the ropes. Poor Jamie. We ran into them again today at the cache (where we decided to take a break). We talked to Paul and asked him if he would yell at Jamie for us. He did. Jamie had _no_ idea what he had done this time. I mean, they were taking a break; what could he have possibly done wrong? Everyone was laughing. Jamie was just confused.
Onward!
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Well, we made it. The post-cache walk up to 14,200' (Camp 4) wasn't too bad. Or it shouldn't have been too bad. You see, Mike lets us know at the start of each day, "this isn't a race. We'll be moving slowly and steadily. We have all day, so there's no point in going fast." This is particularly amusing in light of the fact that he became intent on passing another group at the final stretch before camp. This other group didn't seem particularly interested in letting us pass. So, Mike picked up the pace and veered off trail - so, while going fast we also have to break trail (with crampons) at the same time. It was a lot like sprinting at the end of a long race - with the addition of a heavy pack and high altitude. It wasn't as hard as the Camp 3 sled-drag I endured, but this seemed needless. No muscle soreness to report though.
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Paul and Jamie set up camp near us. I went over and talked with them for a bit. Cool guys.
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Mike reminded us of the permanent "bathrooms" here at Camp 4. You see, we don't actually have to roll our own at this camp. There are two bathrooms: one with a seat and one that requires squatting. Both bathrooms used to have seats, but apparently the Asian visitors don't sit; they only squat; and they'd do so by standing on top of the toilet seat. Eventually the toilet seats would break, so, the powers-that-be finally gave in and now there's an official squatting bathroom.
Time to set up camp. There's nothing like getting to a new, higher altitude and then having to cut and transport ice blocks, build walls and set up tents.
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A helicopter just swooped in and left again shortly thereafter.
Wes and I took a trip over to the ranger/medical camp just to check it out. They have a white board propped up that has the weather forecast on it. Paul, one of the medical guys working for the Park Service came over and talked with us for a while. Paul does these five to six week stints on the mountain each year and has worked as a medic for some sixteen years in Maine. Wes mentioned that he was a medic for the San Francisco fire department and we got invited back to check out the camp's med facilities later, if we were interested.
I asked about radios - they only use some Park Service channels and FRS. No Ham stuff. And they have a Park Service radio repeater on some adjacent mountain.
Paul said that they had just treated one guy for P.E. and another for frostbite. The latter guy is going to lose two toes. The contributing factors (I asked - because, well, I don't want to lose any toes) were wet and dirty socks and dehydration (1.5L in two days). Much like the effect of seeing really gross teeth and gums and instantly wanting to brush one's teeth - I now intend to change my socks after we get our cache from down below, tomorrow. And tomorrow is a rest day, so beyond changing my socks I intend to do as little as possible.
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The weather up here is amazing. I'm sitting outside our new camp, just soaking up the rays. No wind. Clear skies. Bright, hot sun. Tour planes flying over-head. Of course, according to the weather white board, it's supposed to get down to -15 tonight; but as long as I'm in the direct sunlight, it's great. We have our sleeping bags out on the tents, baking, and any moisture in the tents is also vacating. Very much the nicest day yet. Although, on that note, it was seriously cold going around Windy Corner today.
From my present vantage point I can see the path to Camp 5 - which goes up some two thousand feet (that we can see from here) and it looks like its bloody straight up. It's called the headwall and it looks like going down is much more fun that going up. At parts, I'm told, it's a fifty degree slope, but that's the worst of it, and that part is on fixed lines. From here I can also see Mt. Foraker and Hunter, clouds to the right of Foraker and endless mountains between the two peaks as far as I can see.
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Baron, Brian and Yuri seem to be suffering from the altitude the most, but none of them seem too bad. A day of acclimating will do us all well.
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Dinner was this __ILLEGIBLE__ that gets boiled plus ramen and chicken. And oreos for desert.
As soon as the sun started setting the temperature took a serious dive. -15 projected for tonight. Man its cold. Tomorrow we retrieve our cache and hang out. Mike said that breakfast will wait until after sunrise. He also said that the first RMI group got to 19k today with their last two climbers before they turned around (due to the clients).
