Moving Up the Glacier – First Big Move Day

We started fiddling around 2am and started moving from camp around 4am. I had a bagel that was heated in butter – tasty and full of calories!

We had to take down the tent and everything, this is just laborious and time consuming to get all of our stuff and group gear in the pack and sled – all in blowing snow.

The rope team was now more or less set as it would be for the next two weeks as: Joey-Laine-Mitch-Paula.

We went at a good reasonable pace, but I was still suffering from pulling behind and ahead of me. Finally the pace got really good and I thought about (mind-distracting):

Golf – good rounds, good shots, places I played and placed I wanted to play.

That killed about an hour or so (yay).

There were parts that were really uphill – our goal was to make to to 11,200 camp and pass our cache (not pick-up) at 9700′ – so a total elevation gain of more than 3400′ in one day.

I felt really dehydrated and weak, though I did try to eat and drink a lot.

We finally got to 11,200′ at around 1145 where we had a tent issue. We had agreed that we should trade our 3-man tent back to Laine and Sandra in exchange for their 2-man tent, which they had had for 3 nights.

When we got to this camp, Sandra, and Sam & Alex had (rightfully) taken the available place which had existing snow walls and a mostly flat surface which they were flattening out. We gave them the poles and tent and fly and started to create our own space, which took about 90 minutes or more as we had to start from scratch to build walls and flatten an area. When we went to set up the tent we discovered that we ended up with the 3-man tent again! Even though we had given them the same tent. Its not clear how they got mixed up, but after clearing area and setting everything up there ensued a short discussion of whether we should give up the site and tent to Sandra and Laine, but in the end, we kept both. It took a total of 2 and a half hours to get all of this ready and we were pretty tired and grumpy by this time. We finally took our stuff in to get sleeping bags and everything set up.

In my journal – though I don’t remember later – I noted that, “Paula had to go #2, but did not want to go back outside, so she dug a hole outside the vestibule. I went inside my sleeping bag and closed my nose and ears. She had good success and was Very Brave.”

So now we’re at 11,200′ and looking up at Windy Corner and Kahiltna Dome. A Very Hard Day. We had Pesto Pasta for dinner. My iPod broke and would not work (then).

It snowed all night.