Jon Ryall called in to wish all his friends and family in the UK well and to brief us all on the day’s events.
The team took a rest day today and worked on some of the skills they will need to employ tomorrow and in the coming days. They secured lengths of their climbing ropes to snow pickets in order to practice using their ascenders (mechanical rope clamps). If the weather holds, they will carry loads of supplies up the Headwall, the steepest section of the route, which is equipped with fixed lines of rope, to which they will clip their ascenders as a form of self belay. This section leads from about 15,600′ to 16,200′. Somewhere above the top of the Headwall, they will cache their supplies for their move to high camp in a couple of days.
They also spent some time fortifying their camp. They use snow saws and shovels to cut blocks of firm snow out of the glacier and then stack them in such a fashion as to make walls around their tents to help fend off the potentially fierce winds that can run across the broad basin in which they are camped.
Here’s Jon!
