Mt. McKinley (2011) - Day 12
Rest at Camp 4
09:45 - These puffy pants are amazing. If I combined them with my parka (which is presently serving as a pillow), I could probably forego a sleeping bag entirely. It's an interesting thought. Maybe use the goretex sleeping bag cover to stay dry? Hmm.
Anyway, several times throughout the "night" (it never gets dark), I awoke WAY over heated. These puffy pants are not designed to come off with ease. The suspenders ensure they stay in place even when you would rather they not. Fortunately, they have full length side zippers, and when I unzipped them completely, and opened up the sleeping bag completely, and drank some icy water, I could finally return to sleep. These -5 (F) nights aren't what they used to be.
Wes woke up a few minutes later, and for the first time, I exited the tent first. I needed some cool air. There's a constant breeze going on, a couple inches of new powdery snow, and a lot of commotion of people reinforcing walls. Thirteen people are ascending the Head Wall to the base of the fixed lines. Good for them.
Breakfast is an art. We started out by frying half a pound of bacon. So freakin' delicious. I grabbed a couple packs of pop tarts and the stick of butter. At first we were going to just toast the pop tarts but then we decided to use the bacon fat instead of the butter. It sounded good. It tasted awful. I'm sticking with the butter in the future.
12:00 - Wes has started in on water and I walked over to the ranger station to ask about Max and Justin. Late last night we saw them cut to the left and head for some rocks. We figured they were going to hunker down for the storm. The ranger informed me that they saw two climbers descending the fixed lines late last night, and that it was probably they. I glanced around camp, but I don't remember what their tent looks like or where it was set up. If they did the full round trip to and from high camp last nigh, they're hausses.
13:30 - Max walks by and Wes and congratulates him on remaining alive. Apparently they finished the ascent, through the rocks, emptying out into high camp. They saw a group descending from Denali Pass (crazy, in this weather), and then they left high camp, descended the West Buttress, the fixed lines, the head wall, returned to their tent, consumed some ramen and water and passed out. Max has some celebrity status going on.
16:30 - We've spent most of the afternoon napping in the tent. The wind isn't terrible, but it's unrelenting. The gusts at times can be pretty bad. I've made my way through a handful of TAL episodes. I ate some more double-chocolate milanos and Oreos and raisins. It's good to have variety.
A passerby informed us that the NOAA weather report had this storm system persisting in Anchorage through Saturday and that meant one additional day here. This coincides with the weather report we've been hearing each evening (high winds and stuff through Sunday).
We've determined not to make a cache, but to make at least one acclimatization hike to 16,500. Hopefully two. It totally depends on the weather.
The pool in my neighborhood opened five days ago. I'm trying not to think about it. :-) Weather impediments aside, we only have four days left: acclimatize, move to high camp, summit, descend. Technically, we could skip the acclimatize day (I did in 2009, but I also hung out at high camp an extra day before summitting). Four days.
There's AT&T service here. Only analog through, I guess. The ranger (Dave) at the orientation made it sound like that service was disabled, but my iPad distinctly showed zero bars of AT&T. No Edge or 3G, of course. I wonder if my phone could have sent text messages. Probably not. That'd be seriously cool though.
