Jay Patry called in a report from the basin camp at 11,200′ this evening.  He was in high spirits, perhaps due to the Alaskan King Crab legs that they had for dinner tonight?  Wow.  Just.  Wow…

The team dropped downhill a ways this morning, in order to retrieve the cache of supplies they had left at about 10,500 feet a couple days ago.  This was a pretty mellow day, requiring about 20 minutes of descent and an hour or so to carry their loads back up to camp.  We call this a “backcarry” in climber parlance.

Now fully provisioned, the team will set their sights higher on the West Buttress route.  The plan is to carry loads of supplies up a series of steeper hills tomorrow, and deposit them in a cache at around 13,500′.  Tomorrow will be the start of the real climbing on the route.  To this point, they have been hiking and traveling on moderate slopes using snowshoes, but will don crampons and start using ice axes when they head up our of Camp 2.

Here’s Jay!