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The Financially Feasible Five Friday, June 23, 2000
This is Bill McCormick, calling on behalf of Alpine Ascents International trip number six. The Joneses, Jack Edwards, Tony... the gang... I'm having a little altitude related brain fart here, but everybody is doing exceptionally well. It's a strong group, and assistant guide is Dave Bangert, an old friend. We are at 14,000 feet. It's a beautiful evening. The sun is just heading toward the West Buttress, at which point when it dives behind, the temperature plummets. But right now, I'm looking over the shoulder of the West Buttress to the interior of Africa, big thermal build up, obviously pretty warm out there. But then looking across the range towards Anchorage, and of course, we've got [Unintelligible] Hunter standing out spectacularly... breath of wind. So, the good news, besides the weather, is we have a very fit group, a real enjoyable group. Moving right along, and we're going to do a carry to 16,000 feet tomorrow, and yesterday, being the solstice, Tony led us, regaled us, with an amazing tale, a story, I don't know if it's [Unintelligible] but it definitely entertained us. We are pretty much—just that anticipation of getting upward, but tempering that with the realization that it's always, we have to make sure we're allowing proper time to acclimatize, and we passed some of our AAI brothers and sisters today. Vernon's group came down, came through camp around three hours ago, happy to be heading down, happy to have summitted. Apparently had a very, very, good trip. And yesterday, or the day, actually, it kind of runs together, maybe four passed, Forrest and Jim and their young woman, and they also had a very good trip. Things are looking really well here. I've got a little aside on the first Alpine Ascents trip of the season, which took place, started in early May, and that is one of our members, Tim Lovelock, he was professor from [unintelligible], completed the "Triple F": financially feasible five. I think he's going to copyright that expression, but kind of in contrast to the seven summits, this is the fiscally feasible five, which is [Unintelligible] except Everest and Vinson, and I know Tim was happy with that. Tim shared a lot of his romantic poetry on that trip, in particular, I remember, "to strive to seek and not to yield." oh, and, "to find, and not to yield." Well, of course, we're tempering that. We'll let the mountain gods and the weather gods direct when to slow down and when to [Unintelligible]. And basically, looking forward to the coming week, and we'll keep in touch we'll give you [Unintelligible] often as possible. And, once again, Joneses, Luke, Jack, Tony, Dave and myself, Bill, we're all...[transmission fails].
— Bill McCormick, Alpine Ascents International, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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