Archive for June 10, 2007

Day 2 - Insomnia

June 10, 2007 by Lei.

The first night really reminds me of the movie “Insomnia”. At 10pm, it’s already 2 am EST for me, so I called off the night early. But it’s still bright day light outside, feel like the middle of the day. No wonder the most prominent thing I see when I walked into my room is the eye mask. I woke up at 3am, it’s already bright day light outside, and hard to say if night ever fell here last night. I still felt tired (from what? I don’t even understand why I felt tired), so continued to sleep until it’s time for my breakfast around 8.

We got a full house at breakfast table. The other 10 or so guests here either come for a wedding, or just a short vacation. Our host Sandy and Jerry are both retired university professors. They spend the summer here, and winter in Mexico. Seem quite a lot of retired people come live here just for the summer then spend winter in south. I chatted with them about the living cost in Alaska. Last night at dinner, I noticed that the food here is not cheap at all, even locally produced food like crab and salmon is at as expensive as any other city. They told me that living cost outside anchorage is even higher. Food, gas, nothing comes cheap here. As usual, I eat more than two person’s serving at breakfast that kept our host busy. The reindeer sausage is delicious.

 

10 o’clock is our team meeting time. Our team consists of three guides and ten clients. Lead guide, Dave Staeheli has been guiding on Denali for several decades; Assistant guide, Pablo from Ecuador and Zach from Colorado both are new to Denali, but had been on one previous (unlucky) expedition this season. Of the 10 clients, there are three British that is trying to make a world record by climbing all 7 summits within 150 days, and this is the last one for them. They just came off Everest, then went to Elbrus, now the last stop. Two of them are actually professional mountain guides themselves. This makes our team no short of professional hands.

 

Our plan is to fly off to glacier tomorrow (Monday) afternoon around 3pm if condition allows. Then set up base camp and practice some technical skills. We will then do a single carry the next day to camp 1, and plan to arrive at 11,000ft camp 2 within four days (with day 1 being the day we start moving from Base camp to camp 1). We are also plan to have one guide staying team members in each tent at high camp, so everyone can have access to cooking easily when weather is bad outside. Weather has been so bad in May, Dave is optimistic about some break in June. Mountain Trip also buried a big cache (that take up 8 long, 5 feet wide, 4 feet deep in the snow) of extra food at high camp. So we only need to carry up 14 days worth supply. By normal weight calculation, at least 2 pounds of food and a quarter litter of fuel per person per day. One week’s cache would mean 20-30 pounds per person! How nice is that!

 

We spend the rest of day doing last minute gear shopping and packing. I got some nice collapsible 96oz Nelgene container to be my dedicated pee bottle, no more worry about stuck with a full and frozen pee bottle in a stormy night.

 

Now, I’m off for the last civilized dinner. Hopefully, I will be able to report from glacier tomorrow. If I’m lucky to get connection there, it will be just some succinct message.

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