Challenge accepted, Amy! Leif stepped up and jumped on the satellite phone to share a really nice update from Genet Basin at 14,200′.
The team had a big day as they climbed up from their Camp 2 at 11,000′ and up the thousand foot slope known as Motorcycle Hill. After a brief rest, they set out up the steeper and icier slopes of Squirrel Hill, then along the base of the West Buttress, with it’s steep snow and ice gullies bisecting steeper rock flutes and ribs. After turning the infamous Windy Corner they hiked another hour and a half or so up into a broad basin to make camp.
Their Camp 3 is sometimes called Advance Base Camp, because the team will spend 4-5 days there, acclimatizing and preparing for their push to the upper mountain and, ultimately, the summit. It is a spectacular setting, with mile-high steep ice and rock soaring above them and almost to the 20,310 foot summit of Denali. The view to the south and southwest is expansive, looking across the Kahiltna Peaks to the 14,500′ Mount Hunter and over at the immense 17,400′ Mount Foraker, Denali’s sister.
Here is Leif!
