Day 7

Snow plume on the West Buttress with Squirrel Point below

Overnight the wind completely died. We got up at 7 AM with high cirrus clouds. It was going to be a beautiful day. What a place! Such rapid changes in the weather! We got away about 10:30. The day turned into a real roaster: blazing sun and no wind. I never did take off enough clothes. Could have climbed in a tee shirt and shorts, but I hadn’t brought any. Today was the heavy load, and I was moving slow, but of the three on our rope team, me, Ryan, and David, only David was pulling a sled. We were roped up, because the entire route was heavily crevassed. This part of the route is notorious for bad weather. A person or two has died here. Mainly at Windy Corner, where the trail traverses across a fairly steep slope. If it was icy and you came loose, it would be

The crowd struggling up Motorcycle Hill

Dove at Squirrel Point

a short ride into a big deep crevasse. But today the mountain was friendly. We stopped and ate lunch at the Corner. Today it was Windless Corner. Beautiful view down to the Kahiltna. We could see the turn off the main glacier that led up to base camp. We had come far.

Kyle trudging up to Windy Corner

Continuing to trudge uphill, we reached the 14 camp (actually it’s at 14,200') at about 5:30. Seven hours to do about 3 miles and 3200 vertical feet. A slow time compared to the standard guide of 2 mph and 1000'/hr. That would have made it under 5 hours. So the altitude and weight of the pack was definitely slowing me down. I was also in pain. Even though David was taking care of me and carrying more than his share of the food and also the tent, I figured my pack weighed about 50 pounds. I had not done a good job of balancing the weight and the straps were killing my shoulders. I was changing the straps, pulling on them, jockeying the weight around, in an attempt to relieve the pain. The jockeying helped a little, but I was distracted from the spectacular views and weather. I consoled myself with the thought that the next time I carried a load that heavy I would be going downhill, and headed home.

The trail to Windy Corner

We managed to find some fairly well dug out and set up camp sites. That was a relief - no digging today. The views out the door of the tent were never that great. We were always looking at the inside of the snow block walls. But the views from the 14 camp were astounding. The camp is on a plateau that is perhaps a mile long and a half mile wide. To the south west, the plateau drops away and in the distance, Foraker dominates the view. You can see forever from here. I bet that at night you could see the lights of Anchorage, except that it never gets dark. To the south was the West Rib then moving north up the ridge, the Orient Express, so named because so many Asians have met their fate on its icy slope. If you come off the summit in poor visibility and just head downhill, you end up on the Orient Express. Steep, slabby, and either loose snow or icy. Dangerous, steep, with man-eating crevasses

Looking back from Windy Corner

at the bottom. North from there was the Messner couloir. It was named after Reinhold Messner, perhaps the worlds greatest living mountaineer. That was the route he took to the summit. More power to him. Looked steep and imposing to me. Farther north was the rescue gully. At the top of this thin couloir was the camp at 17,200.’ Our next stop. A little north up the ridge from the rescue gully was the Headwall. This was the standard route and the way we would go. You could see the line of ants crawling up and down the fixed ropes. The ridge extended further north and dropped out of sight as it headed west toward Windy Corner. The 14 camp is the best protected camp above base camp, and usually has the best weather, and lightest winds, between 11,000' and the summit. The camp also sports a ranger station in a set of tents, complete with a doctor. They broadcast weather reports at 8 PM every night, although it’s better to walk over to the ranger tent and hear the report they get, instead of the one they transmit from their hand-written notes ten minutes later.

The 14 camp seemed about as busy as the 11 camp, that is to say, lots of people. And most of them were international. The French were next door, Dove was across the way talking to the Italians, the Germans were ever present, the Koreans had their flags up over their campsite, and English accents seemed to be everywhere.

A solo climber carrying skis around Windy Corner

I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream about an imaginary family. I was with my wife and child. The child was hurt, the wife was angry at me for not doing something, I didn’t know what. Finally I communicated that our child was hurt. Her anger instantly evaporated and she attended to our little boy, who had a cut in his neck. I woke up thinking about my ex-wife and children. Things could have been so different. I had been such a fool in those days, now long gone. I felt the loss and mourned.

I woke up a little later thinking about the age old question of, "Why do people climb mountains?" I think there isn’t just one answer. If you asked, "Why do people play golf?" you also would get more than one answer. But I think there is a piece of an answer that is fairly pervasive among mountaineers. Some people like to go to the beach. Why? Because they feel better there. Something about the ocean relaxes them inside. Forests are the same way, as are

The view from Windy Corner with Mt. Foraker in the distance

gardens. For all of our interstates, remotes, and fast food, we cannot escape our connection to the natural world. We came from it, belong to it, and will someday return to it. Mountains are no different in this respect than beaches, forests, or gardens, except perhaps the experience is intensified and made more valuable because of the greater physical effort required to get there. And there is no denying that there are plenty of boys in the mountains attempting to prove their manhood, and many women attempting to prove that they can do anything a man can do. We also can’t forget those adrenalin junkies who get a rush out of danger. I have personal experience with that one. So there are lots of reasons why people climb, perhaps as many as there are climbers, but I think the connection with the natural world is an important one.

The predicted low at the 17,000' camp is 15 below. It should be warmer than that here, I hope.