Thursday, August 9, 2012

Day 10: Cache at Windy Corner (13,700ft)


And it did improve! Thank goodness… It actually wasn’t looking very good when we woke up at 8am this morning. We had a team meeting to discuss our plan: go up, or stay here. A couple members of our team were not eager to push on in potentially bad conditions, but I and several of my teammates countered that if the conditions worsened, we would just turn around and abandon the attempt. We took the risk and ascended Motorcycle Hill—the slope where the four Japanese climbers had been killed a week before—for the first time. Though it looked incredibly imposing and difficult, it really wasn’t so bad. The weather actually ended up improving significantly and we were able to put our cache in at the bottom of Windy Corner. We returned to Camp II very excited by our achievement, but still wary of the avalanche risk that haunts the mountain after any significant snowfall. 

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