Mt. McKinley (2008) - Day 20
Stuck at Camp 4
My best night of sleep yet. That makes three days in a row of marked sleep improvement. Time for breakfast.
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Breakfast was that cran-bran cereal stuff and one of the sweet-and-salty nut bars. They're pretty good. I'm tired of the cereal.
The winds at 17k camp are supposed to reach 110 mph today, and apparently there are more than just two or three people up there trying to wait it out. A two-man Japanese team attempting the Cassin is now four days over-due. The winds on the upper-mountain sound very much like the ocean during a bad storm. You can bet that their CMC is in the vestibule of their tent. Brian said that the weather forecast whitebard thing shows high winds on the upper-mountain continuing through the middle of next week. Mike hasn't mentioned any such thing yet. If that does prove to be the case, we'll run out of food before the weather clears - and I have no idea how we'd retrieve our 16,500' cache. Or do we just leave it?
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The mountain walls surrounding 14k camp are bright and sparkly because the high winds have blown away all of the snow, revealing the blue ice underneath.
Looks like today will be another day in the tent. Man I wish I had brought an iPod with me. If I end up doing this again next year because we were unable to summit this year, at least I'll be able to put to use all of the things I learned this time around. Still, that's a very disturbing thought. As a team I can say that we are all very well acclimated to 14k, if nothing else.
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We're trapped. I missed the meeting but got the re-cap: Mike confirmed what I heard from Brian. High winds through the middle of next week and high winds down at Windy Corner which makes our descent kind of hard as well. Supposedly we're going to try to get our cache from the top of the fixed lines tomorrow and then hang around until we can safely descend. There's always a chance that the weather will change soon, but not much of a chance.
I'm wondering whether Wes/Dan would entertain the idea of returning next year, sans the guide company. A smaller, more agile group. It's an interesting thought.
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A small glimor of hope: John said that we're trying to get food from those climbers who are deciding to turn around now. With a little supplementary food we could stick it out through Wednesday - although the forecast doesn't indicate that we should necessarily expect better weather after Wednesday. We only have food, here, through tomorrow. Great.
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I took a nice nap this afternoon. The nap ended when John decided to meticulously (not to mention noisily) scratch all the ice off his side of the tent from the inside. Whatever.
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The weather started calming down at 14k camp around dinner time and most everyone was out and about camp this evening. A few groups (the Seals, the Brits and two AAI groups) are giving up and heading down and we are getting a little bit of food from them.
During dinner (rice, beans and chicken) Mike mentioned that the plan was to wait out the storm (through Wednesday) and that the three guides might ascend the headwall tomorrow to retrieve our cache. If the weather does improve after Wednesday, then we could do the move to 17k camp, or possibly entertain the notion of a "hail mary" and summit from here at 14k camp, which would probably be a 18 hour trek. It was obvious that not everyone was keen to summit from here, but I'd rather try that in lieu of no summit attempt.
Baron finally acknowledged that he is returning prematurely. He is departing tomorrow with one of the two AAI groups. He'll be returning to Ancohrage but intends to meet up with us in Talkeetna once we finally give up.
The two-man Japenese team who are (or were) on the Cassin are now four or five days over-due. They have a cook tent and a cache at Camp 1, and friends in Talkeetna who are waiting for them. It looks pretty grim for them at this point.
My toes are cold. I think its time to start staring at the ceiling of the tent for a while. Good night.
