Day Nine – 12 th June
Oh dear Lord. Every day gets worse. We had breakfast of pancakes with honey and departed about 9.30 am. This time we had taken down the tents and I was carrying me and Jo’s tent. It felt heavy and got heavier during the day. We had the food and fuel divied up again and each carried a share. And we had the sleds to contend with. Up motorcycle hill, up squirrel hill, past windy corner and today Miss Denali smiled upon us and there was no wind. It was really perfect weather conditions. Not too cold either. Then we passed our cache and slogged on up another long hill for an hour and half and reached camp site four. We had to dig snow platforms to put the tents on and finally got settled in our little homes about 7pm. It was really hard work shovelling the snow and putting the tent up. I would really love to burn this tent when we’re finished. It’s a ridiculous design. Very awkward. Poles keep popping out of their sleeves and after a hard day’s walking up a very big mountain it’s the last thing you need. But when it’s up it’s alright. It’s our protection from the outside snowy and windy, bleak wilderness.
Dinner will be half past 8 ish. There is no data. I was so looking forward to getting here and being in contact with civilisation. Tomorrow I will have a try around the area to see if I can get a signal. It was so beautiful walking today with crevasses all around us and huge cavernous rooms sculpted in blue ice by the wind and cold. Then the last hour my back was really hurting with the load. It got to be proper ‘dig in’ mental attitude to keep going. I was listening to a terrible podcast by Lyle MacDonald about female diets and fat loss. It was so sexist and untrue I’d love to meet him and smack him one in the face for some of his ridiculous generalisations about men and women. So I was slugging it up the last hill with smoke coming out of my ears.
Now we are at 14,000 feet/ 4357m elevation. It took us about 7 and half hours to walk about two and half miles. My legs are alright, my back is in pain though. And I feel alright altitude wise. No headaches or any signs of AMS. (Acute mountain sickness)
Just come back from dinner and it was best described as a bus smash. Even guide Eric said he just put a load of stuff from freeze dried bags into the pot altogether. It was sort of like a stew but you have to eat it anyway to keep strength up. It’s much colder up at this camp as well. We are 1000 m higher up and you definitely know it. In my sleeping bag as well as the usual suspects are the inner boots from my big Millet high altitude mountaineering boots and my gloves. This stops them from freezing. Pretty much everything I have is now in the bag at night with me. You don’t want to be putting your feet in freezing inner boots. The inner boots then go inside the tougher outer shell boots. They certainly are clunkers. Then attach a pair of snow shoes or crampons and walking gets quite interesting. We have left the snow shoes at the last camp now. From today onwards it’s always crampons now as higher up they are better on steeper slopes and also the snow is more like ice up here.
It’s 9pm now and bed time. I hope I’ll be cosy in my minus 60 degrees bag. It’s going to freezing tonight.