Mt. McKinley (2011) - Day 09
Camp 3 to Camp 4
09:45 - Wes fired up the stove and got the water going while I started packing things up and digging our Camp 3 cache. We're moving to Camp 4 today - along with several other teams that have a couple hour head start on us due to their willingness to emerge from their sleeping bags and tents before it's warm outside. Crazy people.
Here at Camp 3 we'll cache our snowshoes (!), sleds and a few miscellaneous other items. Our hope in taking a heavy cache load yesterday was that we'd have a relatively easy trek to Camp 4 today, which is a full hour beyond yesterday's cache location (at 13,500). It didn't work out that way. We both agreed that our packs were at least as heavy as yesterday; probably heavier. We need to eat more to get this weight down.
13:30 - Well past the "crack of noon", and well after the slowest other team had long since disappeared over Motorcycle Hill, we started slowly making our way up. It was hot. Really hot. But the clouds sporadically covered the sun, quickly turning really hot into really cold - when considering the very slight breeze. It doesn't take much when you lack direct sunlight. I decided to chance being uncomfortably cold instead of uncomfortably hot, and stripped down to a t-shirt. I didn't regret this decision.
At the top of Motocycle Hill, where we suspected it'd be windier and shadier, it was only hotter.
We spied the Angry Irishman team (our name for this this two-woman, one-man team - the one man always looks angry) cresting Squirrel Hill. They were taking a break in the Polo Field when we arrived, and we too took a break. I had a brief moment to talk with the namesake of the Angry Irishman team, and he seemed perfectly pleasant. I can't reconcile this. We got back to the ascent before they did, and as we finished the Windy Hill climb and turned Windy Corner, they fell out of sight.
I should mention that there is one thing you can count on, on this mountain: Windy Corner will always be windy and bitterly cold. It was not. It was completely still. It was snowing slightly, falling straight down. Snowflakes would land on the hair on my arm and not melt, thus attesting to the cold ambient temperature. Still, with just a t-shirt, I was baking.
A few minutes after starting the traverse from Windy Corner towards the previous day's cache point (which will be the location of our next and final break before Camp 4), we stepped up a ridge a few feet to let some down-climbers with sleds pass by. The first climber warned us quietly, "the folks behind me have no idea what they're doing", and sure enough, I don't understand how they had lasted that long. They had a running belay along this traverse, which was totally justified given how unbalanced they appeared while dragging those sleds along the slope. It took about ten minutes for the eight of them to finally pass by. The leader of the group told me that they had not summitted because they only had a total of 16 days of time for the trip. Why bother trying?
After breaking at the 13,500 cache area, we caught up with the AAI group that we saw and passed the first day. They referred to our very casual pace as "sprinting".
On the horizon we saw the German duo that flew onto the glacier with us. They were a ways off, but Wes was determined to overtake them, in case there was just one camp site left. And we did over take them. And there was just one camp site available. That one "little" push to over take them saved us a couple hours of camp site construction. I call that "pulling a Mike".
18:30 - While setting up camp, I saw what appeared to be Mike, strolling by. Wes shouted his name, and he came over. We chatted briefly, but the weather report was about to start and Mike had to go re-join his RMI team.
After a quick freeze dried dinner, Mike and his assistant guide (Jeff), a ranger and someone else stopped by and we talked for an hour or so. It was good catching up.
The sun had long since set and the temperature was dropping, so we all turned in.
