Mt. McKinley (2011) - Day 15
Rest at Camp 4
Nicely timed to make it easy for me to as least partially honor the sabbath, the weather today was marginally too bad to make a move to high camp, and increasingly sucky throughout the day. We saw several teams descend from here, including Mike's Alpine Ascents team, the French duo we met on the Denali Overland ride from Anchorage to Talkeetna (who are descending after an attempted move to high camp this morning, only to turn around after they determined that their packs plus cache content was simply too heavy); and the Yeti (?) team (ie, the angry irishman), which, according to Sarah (?), was descending because one member decided he was not into mountaineering, and also something about two others. They all live in Anchorage (boring), so returning to this mountain is logistically simple for them another year.
09:00 - Possibly our earliest rising time, it was mostly calm outside, or so we thought, but that turned out to be mostly a result of the tent being covered in snow. We spent the morning shoveling snow and staring longingly at the West Buttress, which was just getting hammered by wind. More than a few teams made their move to high camp, driven by reports of decent weather for summitting on Monday and (to a lesser extent) Tuesday. That trip to high camp couldn't be any fun.
Breakfast this "morning" was the last of our pancakes and bacon. It's a fine combination. Despite the blowing snow, the direct sunlight moderately baked the tent, which served to thaw the aforementioned bacon. In later conversation with the Army Ranger group (which team is situated next door to our right), one of them complained of the smell of pancakes and bacon, "again". I heartily confessed and explained that it was the last of both, so there'd be no more such smells.
19:45 - The weather has deteriorated all day. It was almost nice in comparison, this morning. High camp and the rest of the upper mountain is completely shrouded in clouds and we can hear the wind at times. The brief breaks in the blowing snow are marked by intense calm and sunlight. I know that mere consistency wouldn't really be preferable, but maybe if just the bad weather was grouped together for a few constant hours followed by the good weather in like duration. As it is, conversation is marked by everyone suddenly turning to face the same direction (backs to the wind) while the gust blows by, and then everything resumes - until the next gust. It's convenient being able to see the gusts coming due to the snow content.
Mike Walter's team is on day 12 here at camp 4. They ran up the fixed lines with Billy's team. I'm not sure why. If they plan to move tomorrow, that's an excellent way to make sure everyone is wiped out beforehand.
The Mountain Trips client who has made an art of ice letter carving, made an obelisk today. Two weird Russians (?) posed next to it with ice tools in hand - as though getting to Camp 4 were somehow like summitting. Wes grabbed a picture of them.
