Vern set the wake-up call at Noon! It turns out that because of the orientation of the mountain ridge by the camp, the direct sunlight would not hit the tents until 11:30 AM. The direct sunlight provides a huge amount of radiant heat! The extra sleep was also very welcome!
After breakfast, hot drinks, and packing, we are climbing again by 3:30 PM. The visibility is a little better today - about 200 feet (61 m). I can't really see the terrain we are climbing in, but the sense of whiteout when I look to either side is gone. There is no wind and we are again climbing in our base layer.
We arrive at Camp 1 after 6 hours of climbing. At Camp 1, Vern wants us to get a snow wall started around the tents. We set up the tents close together and after the posh is set up we begin a quarry for the walls. Vern has 30 years of experience cutting and building snow walls - and is also very particular in how he likes the process to go and the end product to function. He's a very good teacher and in about 30 minutes we are producing semi-acceptable blocks. We get a least one row complete before Tim calls us in for soup. With the quarry started and one row complete, the logic is that we could quickly build the rest of the wall if needed. The weather forecast looks good for the next several days - and the collective hope is that we will not need the wall!
After another great dinner, Vern has the team out to rehearse climbing the fixed lines in a flat area by our tents. We get our harnesses on, properly rig our ascenders, and rehearse using three sets of gloves - to navigate a series of anchors that will guide us up 3,280 ft (1,000 m) of fixed lines and back down. We start off with a pair of thin glove liners and get used to moving our carabiner and fastening and unfastening our ascender. Then its the same process with a warmer, thicker, harder to use glove - followed by the same process using our almost impossible to use mittens! We practice for about 45 minutes until everyone feels comfortable.
Why are we climbing fixed lines? Several years ago the Vinson climbing route was altered to bypass a crevasse and avalanche field. The new route is up the side of a fairly steep slope (check out the video). ALE set up the fixed lines each year on the slope. We will spend approximately 4.5 hours just on the section of fixed lines...
We climb into the bags around 1 AM with another wake-up call set for Noon!
Comments