Denali Team 6: June 3 to June 23 - Dipatch #12

Guides: Mike Pond, Dustin Byrne, Tad McCrea

Climbers: Jim Bonadonna (New York), David Wain (UK), David Pritchett (UK), Todd Fletcher (Australia), Peter Menne (Germany), David Martin (Australia), Mark Mueller (California), Philip Mace (Bermuda), Brian Knowles (California)

Mike Pond called June 19th at 11:30pm PST with the following dispatch: What's up outside world. Sorry we haven't been calling too much our batteries on the SAT phone have been low so we've been conserving for our summit day, which was today, and we summited in fantastic conditions. It was actually hot all day, literally hot, I'm not exaggerating. Brian, Phillip, Todd and Mark summitted with me. David and Tad stayed at 18,800; definitely a respectable high point. We sumitted first of the day, and it was nice to get up there and down. We're hoping to get up early and head down tomorrow, and fly out Thursday. Once again we're sorry for not calling as much as we could, we've been having to conserve for emergencies. In other news It's really beautiful up here.

By the way, Dustin and two others, (names were muttled sorry) headed down two days ago they are probably in Talkeetna already. We're all pretty tired right now, it's 10:30pm we've been up for a while. We're all really psyched right now and just happy and exhausted and just happy to be alive and it was just a great finish to our expedition after some really challenging weather. These guys really represented and stuck it out. So, hopefully in a day and a half we'll be drinking burgers and eating in Talkeetna!

Messages: Happy Belated Father's Day from Brian.