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Crime and Punishment on Denali Friday, June 30, 2000
Hello, this is Bill McCormick, Alpine Ascents trip number six and Patience Camp was on the move today. Made a really good effort and got up to 19,000ft, but unfortunately we were heading into a lenticular cloud, blowing snow and wind. At that point, we opted to turn around, return to camp. We just had a good dinner, rehydrated and hopefully we're going to give it a go tomorrow. Actually, there's probably a pretty good chance we can have some success. It appears the winds are kind of dropping down here and clouds are dissipating, low-lying clouds are kind of fading out. So, basically spirits are pretty good. People, by virtue of the whole group being in pretty darn good shape, we're able to really give it a good honest attempt tomorrow. We'll just see what happens. Willi and his group moved down to 14 this afternoon after summitting yesterday and I believe Tom Bridge and his group are probably at 16,000ft in one of the snow caves. Here at camp at 17, things are getting really pretty quiet. There are very few parties. There's one other guided party, a Mountain Trips one, led by Todd Rutledge, a good man, and Joel. We'll be moving be moving in kind of league with them on the mountain tomorrow. So, once again, we'll cross our fingers, hope for some good news. We've decided that Sunday will be our last attempt. If we don't get up tomorrow, if the weather allows Sunday, we'll give it a go. If the weather Sunday is poor and we haven't been able to get a second attempt in, at that point we'll start heading down the mountain, in which case we'd probably be in Talkeetna on about the 4th of July. So we should be off the mountain the 3rd or 4th, 'course that's always weather dependent. We have been hearing the lower glacier is holding up real well, as far as firm snow bridges. That's very good news. Oh, one little anecdote: on the way up, on the plateau before Windy Corner, we passed two guys in a tent the other day, camped right next to the trail and positioned right next to the trail on some gear was Dostoevsky's — I'm drawing a blank here, oh, this is terrible, I start this anecdote, now I've lost it — Crime and Punishment, yes, and as we were walking by [transmission fails]
— Bill McCormick, Alpine Ascents International, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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