Rob DesLauriers  John Falkiner  Frederik Jacobi  Kit Katzenbach  Ace Kvale  Kasha Rigby  Scot Schmidt  Jim Zellers

Katzenbach

Hear Kit and Kasha's Call

The snow was just about everything; we even skied across some frozen blue ice on the lakes. It was really fun and everybody is doing really well. It was completely successful so far. We have big plans for exploring still because we have 10 days left on this trip. We plan to have a rest day tomorrow, and then go do some more ice climbing around here.

The snow was pretty mixed. Like you might have heard, off the summit, it was not skiable at all; it was blue ice and we all got some amazing ice and rock mixed climbing experience off the summit, and we skied as far as we could. After that it was cold and windy all day and then it cleared for us in the evening. We had a spectacular descent at the end. But the wind was hammering so hard during the day that the snow completely changed on the way back to our snowcaves. When we got up this morning it was tough to decide if we were going to come home or stay another day in the sleeping bags. Everything was cold and wet, and we just kept thinking about the barrels and the sauna, so we made a push for it and came down, had maybe four or five pitches of rappels on ice today with our skis on our packs as part of the descent, but it was good. I'm going to pass you to Kasha. We have a message from everybody and it says love to all of us, Emily. So this is Kit signing off and here's Kasha

Rigby

Hi guys at Mountain Zone and the rest of the world, this is Kasha and basically just to follow up with what she was saying. We're back and we're happy in the barrels. We just had a beautiful dinner of beets, potatoes and chicken soup and now we're sitting with our friends here. The Russians were so excited that we climbed today and we got to the summit that they — one of them got up at six this morning and finished up a home brew of Akkem Lake vodka. We're going to go have a little of that, we're playing the guitars, we're hanging out. First snowboard descent, first telemark descent, everyone's really psyched.... [unintelligible] and now we're getting ready to kick it a little bit, get warm and have a good night's sleep. Hope you guys are doing great, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.

— Kasha Rigby and Kit Katzenbach, Mountain Zone Correspondents

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