By Curtis Jones in climbing — 18 May 2008

Mt. McKinley (2008) - Day 14

Back-Carry from Windy Corner

I didn't sleep so well last night and most everyone else reported the same thing. It took a while to get warm and then I just couldn't get comfortable. Lots of ice was forming in the tent and falling on the sleeping bag then melting. That wasn't comfortable at all.

Breakfast this morning is oatmeal. Yeah, bland and unfulfilling. And just the sort of start I need before we do a back-carry - which is what we're going to do today.

We're hoisting on empty packs now. That's a great feeling. They easily weighed sixty to seventy pounds on the way up here. We're going to run down to the cache, dig it up (well, we'll probably leave the digging to the guides), toss everything into our packs and haul it all back up here to Camp 4.

The back-carry is done. It wasn't too bad. We were *flying* on the way down to the cache. I think it only took about fifteen minutes to get down there. It took considerably longer to get back up here. It is a six hundred foot elevation difference, after all. This is supposedly a rest day, so, let's hope there isn't any ice-wall building in our future.

Tomorrow we're looking at doing a carry to the top of the headwall, or, possibly, caching all the way at Camp 5 (17k), if weather permits and everyone is feeling good. Besides splitting up the weight while ascending the headwall, caching also gives us a taste of the higher altitude - if only for a short while. If all goes well, we might event move to Camp 5 the day after.

Potentially just three more days until we summit. Then two days to get off the mountain.

Another climber was pulled off high camp today due to frostbit hands. The fault apparently lies with his not hydrating sufficiently. A good warning to us all.

Lucia's group should be descending to Camp 4 today (after their unsuccessful summit bid the day before). We dug up their cache and re-purposed their ice-blocks for a wall around our cook tent. We are supposed to be resting today, but they keep finding chores for us. "Active rest" Mike calls it. Yeah, we're all laughing.

Mike gave us all a tutorial on ascending and descending the fixed lines on the head wall. It all looks easy enough.

Lucia's group just returned. They looked like the walking dead. They spent five nights at 17k camp. That must have been seriously exhausting. They all had ice covering their facial hair. They sorted out their cached stuff and they'll be heading the rest of the way down this afternoon. They handed off all of their extra food to other groups up here... to lighten their loads.

I aired out my feet today and put on a fresh pair of socks - such delight.

My hands are freezing. I need to stop.

This is our humble and rather space-efficient camp. We're all suiting up to do a back-carry from 13,600'. The existing walls weren't large enough to accomodating the guides, so we placed their tent outside our camp.

After a fifteen minute sprint down the mountain we arrive at our cache and the guides proceed to dig everything out. Billy fusses for at least ten minutes about not having some piece of gear which he eventually realizes that he already has.