Thursday, September 4, 2008

The 5th Peak!


Pic1. my small remaining team battered by storm.

Pic2. On the way down from West Butress Ridge (from Camp 17,000). Going home after 19days of climbing up.
At long last, I've been dreading my climb in Denali given its super heavy load requirement of 120-130lbs. There are lots of first for me on this one: (1) first time to travel full-on rope-up w/ teams THE WHOLE GADAMN TIME! (2) first time to use sled (w/c amounts to 60% of my total load. (3) first storm on actual summit day!! (4) First time to lose all guides in an expedition (original 3 got sick due to virus?, our summit guide was from a different team/batch). (5) first time to shit in a can hahaha!
Alaska has proven its reputation of sudden weather changes, tons of snow fall, and unpredictable wind conditions. I still feel that our summit assault 'incident' was my closest in meeting Mr. Hell himself, when a 30mph windstorm hit us in the summit, when a teammate (that I was roped up with) fell on one side of the summit ridge (and me losing a mitten in the process), when cold dry wind froze our masks, goggles and faces, when my team was stuck (for a while) in a very exposed summit ridge 930ish in the evening - unable to climb down on a zero-viz and relentless windy condition. THAT WAS SOMETHING! Truly Epic ;)
But that's life ;) we just have to suck it up, survive, and climb again :) On to the 6th of the 7 summits....