A snowman from the Denali archives!

Dave called in to update us from Camp 2 at 11,000′. The team enjoyed a weather slash rest day, and took the time to practice their “snow craft” using snow saws and their shovels. During foul weather, the wind can really pick up and it is important to protect your tent from devastating gusts (Camp 2 saw gusts over 50mph!). The wind has been known to brake tent poles or blow tents away. You start by picking a snow “quarry” where you start cutting beautiful blocks of snow and then you dig them out of your quarry and stack them nicely around your tents etc to build some sturdy snow walls. The key here is consistency in shape. These typically are big, heavy blocks. There is a lot of thought that goes into these snow walls. Like what is the predominant direction of the wind? How tall do you want to build it? You have to take this into consideration in order not to build a nasty wind tunnel where the wind dumps a ton of snow inside the snow wall where your tent is, which would just increase your work load and possibly cause damage to your tent. It’s good to know how wind works!

Weather days may offer a lot of downtime to perfect your cribbage skills, catch up on some reading, take a nap, eat all of your snacks.. or you may spend a lot of it digging snow away from the tents to prevent your tent from being buried. This offers a double benefit of getting your body moving and getting in a sweet upper body workout!

Plus, who doesn’t love to play in the snow like a kid? Snow tunnels, snowmen, snowballs..

The team hopes to cache at Windy Corner at 13,000′ today.

Here’s Dave!

recording