Summit! A hard earned one.

July 3, 2007 by Lei.

I’m at Denver airport on my way back. We did make the summit on the second attempt on June 30th after helping the member that collapsed back to camp. So many things happened on this trip that I was practically holding my breath until I stood on the summit at midnight that day, and I couldn’t relax until I finally got off the glacier.

After a midnight summit that coincided with the arrival of another storm, we made a slow and long descent through white-out conditions and didn’t reach the camp until 6-7am the next morning. Then after a couple hours rest, we descended with full loads to the camp at 14,000ft, our whole bodies still exhausted.

On Sunday, we woke up at 6:30am, then walked over numerous nerve-racking crevasses to finally arrive at base camp at midnight.

Detailed report will come soon! So glad to be back to the world of restaurants and flushing toilets.

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