Holbrook

Lowe

Mark Holbrook
After a long day of hiking, glaciating, skiing and humping loads, Hans and I decided that a night at ABC would be just what the nurse ordered. While Kris, Andrew, and David hurried about emptying packs and rushing off to make dinner at BC, Hans lounged on a Ridge-rest soaking up the sun's rays on the now infamous ABC beach.

We were able to take about an hour nap in the sun before we needed to turn to the necessities of life. Hans' belly was growling and we needed to eat. The food was buried in the "Phone Booth," which is a small rock cave constructed by Kris aka Clark Kent. With the food in dry bags and completely buried with rocks, there is no chance that the local ravens — known as goraks — would not eat all the hard work and labor that we had humped to ABC. We had our choice of many high altitude delights such as dried mangos, breakfast bars, and jerky, but Hans chose the prized meal — couscous and Bombay potato Tasty Bites.

We ran into the same problem that Alex and Conrad had earlier in the day — no one had thought to hump up the silverware to ABC. In an ingenious state, Hans ripped the Whippet ice axes from his ski poles and we gorged to our hearts content. It was the first meal that was completely different from the last three weeks, and it SATISFIED!

After dinner we strolled outside to enjoy our first unobstructed views of the mountain! We hoped to have a spectacular sunset, but with no pollution in the air the reds and oranges we see at home just don't materialize. Oh well, I would rather inhale clean air with 50% less oxygen-capacity then the SLC inversion smog. We crawled into our puffy TNF Solar Flare down bags at about 7:30pm and were sound asleep in minutes. Then came problem number two, no bottles for late night potty requirements. At 10:00pm and again at 2:00am, I was running outside (-10 degrees F), in nothing but sneakers and a down Summit jacket, to unload the day's hydration requirements — talk about having a hard time trying to find the thing.

We slept for 11 hours and awoke to freshly falling snow. After a quick breakfast of bars and coco, we strolled back to BC only to discover problem number three, the Big Kahuna was dead! Hopefully, when we leave for ABC in the morning, we can remember the small things that make life more simple at altitude, and concentrate on enjoying the experience of skiing this incredible mountain.

Alex Lowe
The details of the last couple of days have been covered already. Suffice it to say, Advanced Beach Camp is a dream, and tomorrow we are off to our higher camp for the next couple of weeks.

Famous People That Expedition Members Look Like:
Alex Lowe ... Peter Pan
Conrad Anker ... Conan the Barbarian
Kris Erickson ... Clark Kent
Andrew McLean ... Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes
Mark Holbrook ...George Costanza
Kent Harvey ... Rebel A* hole in The Bad News Bears
Mike Brown... Jean-Claude VanDamme
Dave Bridges ... Billy Idol
Hans Saari ... Barney Rubble

Quote of the day: "What would happen to our expedition if we found an image of the Virgin Mary in the shrimp chips?" — Conrad Anker and Hans Saari

— Mark Holbrook and Alex Lowe, MountainZone.com Correspondents

EXPEDITION DISPATCHES