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| Graham cooking in a crevasse |
When the weather cleared we had a fair dump of snow which made climbing conditions slow and hazardous. A second and more airy knife edge was traversed, and some deep snow further on left us grovelling in a self-made trench. It was hard work. Another spell of bad weather had us tentbound again for most of a day, and yet more snow fell. Tony made the most of the clearing by taking a snow bath, a bracing experience at this altitude! ( I was later to better this on Mt McArthur).
From here the climbing was hell. A long section of deep snow forced us to ascend by the lead man digging a trench with a snow shovel, dropping back to pick up his sack while the next volunteer took lead shovel duties. Not only was it back-breaking work, it was exposing us to some fairly horrendous avalanche risk. When we got to 4250m we established Camp 3.
This was a nice little spot below some cornices, one of which unfortunately broke off in the middle of the night and partially buried Tony & me in our tent. Awaking from a deep sleep, I couldn't work out why our tent was half its previous volume. Much digging and cursing later, we rescued the tent and fixed the two broken poles and ripped groundsheet. It could have been a lot worse.
By now we had been on the mountain for over two weeks. Feeling acclimatised we decided to push on from here 'Alpine Style', taking five days food and fuel and not descending for load carries as we had been doing. We pushed on towards the plateau. More deep snow slowed our progress, but the going got easier as the ridge broadened into a wide shoulder. We were rewarded with superb views as we climbed onto the plateau. Fantastic peaks, many unclimbed, stretched for miles, stopped only by the coastline of the Alaskan Panhandle. We found a good broad campsite at 5050m, just below the East Summit of Logan. Although slightly lower than the main summit, most people climbing the East Ridge top out on the East Peak, as it is quite a bit closer than the main one. After such a long and magnificent ridge, both peaks seem a little bit of an afterthought, 1000m bumps in a huge plateau.
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| Plateau camp (4) - storm clearing. |
The next day I didn't feel so good. The ascent to Camp 4 had been rapid, and
the altitude had taken its toll. I lay in my sleeping bag feeling sick.
After a day of rest I was feeling good and the four of us set off in the morning
for a summit
attempt. We placed sticks, or 'wands', along the flat part of the route,
in order to help us find our way back to the tents.
We were feeling good and made good progress up the easy gradient
slopes.
Somewhere along the way we made the curious decision to go for the main summit, even though this involved a lot of traversing and a longer day. We ignored the slight build-up of cloud in the distant. Unfortunately, these were not good decisions. Our judgements had been affected by 'summit fever', a potent mixture of altitude and egotism.