Denali – Camp Two
Today the team moved from Camp One at 7,800 feet to Camp Two at 11,200 feet, right below the West Buttress. The plan is to stay at Camp Two for two nights.
So far, the team has been doing single carries which means that the team has been only making one trip with all their gear to each camp. Tomorrow, they will do their first “cache.” They will take most of their gear to Camp Three at 13,300 feet and drop it off and return back to Camp Two to spend the night. This will achieve the dual purpose of allowing for acclimitization and also make the trip back to Camp Three on Wednesday considerably easier.
The weather has been excellent staring at about zero degrees in the morning and reaching about 50 F on the glacier. The sun hitting the glacier makes for some intense heat so the team has been going back and forth between single and multiple layers. Sounds like a typical day in the Rockies for these seasoned Colorado climbers, albeit without quite the extreme jumps in temperature.
The team sounded quite upbeat and healthy. Matt is loving the candy bar diet – the calorie burn of these climbs warrants a steady munching of everything from Kit Kats to Baby Ruths. Even with the near constant light, the team is sleeping well.