Paul Pottinger called in from 11,200′ today. His call gets a bit garbled as the satellites far to the south pass behind one of the tall ridges bordering their camp at 11,200′. The team is doing really well and had sort of an active rest day today. They slept in, ate a huge breakfast and then dropped down to their cache of supplies that they buried at 10,200′ a couple of days ago. This is called a back carry day, meaning that they dropped back to carry some gear to their camp. It is a pretty easy day all in all, as it takes only about 20 minutes to drop down to the cache and another hour to hour and a half to hike it all back up to camp.
The team will probably use this same sort of strategy as the continue their ascent of the mountain. The next commonly used camp site is 3,000′ above them, so they will try to carry loads partway to that camp tomorrow and make the big move up the following day. As with anything in the big mountain, “The Plan is subject to change!”
Here’s Paul!
Looking up towards Camp 2 on Denali. You can see a trail heading up the hill, and some climbers taking a break at left, close to the site where the May 13 Team cached below Camp 2.
