Denali

Postle called in from 13.5K a bit ago. His group made a carry today around Windy Corner. He said the entire time he was at 11 it felt like they were at 17,200' high camp. There were 7 broken tent poles in camp. His group only had one. Mark had to take his tent entirely down one night. Usually when this happens the folks from the down tent crawl in with folks in another tent. There were several sets of broken tent poles in base camp from this last wind storm. That rarely happens. I heard through the grapevine he was able to repair the tent once he had it down. We carry substantial repair kits with us on all of our expeditions in case this happens. For the most part we can fix almost anything that might break out there. Mark said that at one point the wind knocked him down and spun him around. That's hard to believe with the intense working out that Mark does. (shown here).

We have reason to believe that Melis is moving up to high camp today. This is one of, if not the hardest day of the expedition. This move often takes between 8-12 hours. If this is the case, Pat and Elliot probably also moved up. In doing so they will have climbed up to the 16K ridge with fairly substantial back packs on, only to put more weight in them for the remainder of the climb to camp. They have to pick up most, if not all of the stuff they cached on the ridge. Most people agree that this is the most spectacular section of the West Buttress. I'll post more photos later, but here's a short video for now:


That's all I know, or that's all I can guess right now.


Rob