Our May 13th West Buttress team continues to wait at 14,200′, waiting for weather to improve, so they can move higher on Denali.  It has been extremely cold, much colder than even Denali is known to be in late May.  The team took advantage of not being able to move by digging a deep snow cave next to their camp.  Snow caves can pretty much block all the wind, so they can be a relatively comfortable shelter, especially when you fire up 4-5 camp stoves!

The weather forecast looks a bit better early next week, but the team will continue to look outside and gauge the weather that they can see, hoping for any window in which to move up to High Camp.  They have supplies in place up above Camp 3, in preparation for a planned move to 17,200′ in the coming days.  In the arctic cold that they are experiencing, it does not take too much wind to drop the wind chill to many, many degrees below 0…

Brrrrr!