Monday, May 14, 2012

Denali Team 2: May 6 to May 26, Dispatch #5


Guides: Mike Pond, Dustin Byrne, Alan Rousseau

Climbers: Garry McMahon (UK), Roy Cursley (UK), Kayla Cooper (Washington), Damon Vincent (Missouri), Greg Lamarche (B), Margaret St. Hill (Australia), Vijay Kumar (New Jersey), Christine Burke (Australia)

Mike Pond called at May 11th, 10:30pm PST with the following dispatch: We have moved a little bit. Today we've created camp 1.5 which is near our cache at 9,400ft. We had a very arduous day getting to this high. We're in a a bit of a low pressure system right now with very strong winds and lots of snow. We had low visibility and had to rely on gps and compass skills to navigate our way to our cache. 

The team made a valiant effort chugging along on the snow train. I was really impressed with how hard they all worked. It was really a challenging day with a lot of snow flakes falling. We could hardly see where we were going, which was fun. We're just going to hunker down for the night. We're camped next to some rangers, actually, and they've informed us of a rumored high pressure system that may or may not be moving in tomorrow. We we would be very grateful for some improvements in the weather. Regardless, we are all doing well here at camp 1.5 and will be in touch soon. Also, Chad Cochran is still with us, and hopefully will rejoin Team 1 soon. 


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