We had now successfully carried 6 days of food and fuel and all the necessary equipment to
our high camp at 17,200'. We figured all we needed now was a 12 hour window of good
weather within the next six days, and we would have our chance! |
||
|
||
|
It looked like we were almost there! At this point I was thinking it was very cold, and I
dared not to expose my hands unnecessarily. I told myself to not take too many pictures,
as this required removing the outer glove of my right hand. The headwall up to the summit ridge looked taller and taller as we approached it. We could see members of the large RMI group along the summit ridge. There must have been 10 of them. As we approached the summit headwall, we noticed a pile of packs that were left behind by the RMI group. We looked at each other, and decided to do the same. In retrospect, I think this was a real stupid thing for us to do, but luckily everything worked out OK. It was a bad move because we had no idea how long it would take us to return to these packs, and we also had no idea that some weather was rolling in. Ironically, Chuck and I had a bad experience doing exactly this many years earlier. Having left our packs at the base of the final bump on Mount Bierstadt, a fourteener in Colorado, we went on to the summit in perfectly clear weather. Out of nowhere that changed, and we found ourselves in a whiteout. We had a hard time finding our packs that day, and we almost lost each other while looking for them. |
||
|
||
| Bill led the rope team on summit day, and in the picture above he was looking back at me and Chuck. Notice Mount Foraker in the background. We were very close to the summit at this point. Another 15 minutes and we were there! The going was very slow at this point, every step was an effort. The exhaustion reminded me of when I first started climbing the fourteeners in Colorado. | ||
|
|
|
|
We made the summit, but we were not home yet! It was a long trip back to our packs, and we
were very happy to find them. We took a quick food and water break, and were on our way
back to Denali Pass. When we got back to the Pass, we were tired. The trail on the
traverse was was well worn, and we elected to travel without the protection of the
pickets. For the next hour, I blocked out everything and just concentrated on my next
step. When we got back to camp we were tired, for it had been a long hard day. We had been gone a total of 14.5 hours. Even though it was the middle of the night, I called Terri to tell her the news. We made it! |
||
 |
||
| Day
16 - The picture above shows two guys that we had met at Camp 5 bidding us
farewell. We were finally on our way home. The guy on the left was a solo climber who had climbed the North Summit the day before, and was resting up to climb the South Summit the following day. He was an interesting character. I couldn't help but notice how old and worn looking his clothing was. Every stitch, on every seam, on every article of his clothing was well covered with layers of seam seal. The guy on the right was one of the guides in the RMI group that was camped across the way from us. While we were packing up our camp and getting ready to leave, the RMI guide ran over and tackled seamseal guy. Obviously they were buddies. As they rolled around in the snow, I wondered where they were getting all this energy. Soon they settled down to talk, and I couldn't help but overhear the conversation, as they were right next to us. Actually, before he was tackled, the solo guy was chatting with us. Their conversation was classic! Noticing his crampons, the RMI guide said, "Hey, I see you still have those old footfangs". Mr. seamseal responded, "No way, I wore those down to nubs"! "Then I bought a pair of switchblades that were real light and pretty, but they were useless. They were like the F_ _ _ - me pumps of crampons"! "I wound up buying another pair of footfangs". |
||
