EISPIRATEN

Epic winter summit adventure.

http://www.adn.com/2010/03/12/1181559/c ... -days.html

If i am reading this right there has never been a woman to summit MCKINLEY in the winter? wow...

tinaballina wrote:If i am reading this right there has never been a woman to summit MCKINLEY in the winter? wow...

And only 14 men have summited and lived to tell about it. 6 died trying. Not good odds for man nor woman.

Tina,
if you're interested, i've got a great book written by a Ruth Anne Kocour (if my memory serves me correctly) that i can lend you. it's a formidable mtn as you proabably know and she had one heck of an adventure. let me know if you want to read it.

Sounds like a goal. 8) (summitting in winter, not the cave)

In April we spent 5 nights (minus 25-35 outside) in an igloo we built at 15,000' and another night (minus 44 outside) in a smaller one we built at 17,000' in our attempt on Denali.

We had spent our first night in a North Face tent on the Kahilta Glacier at 9,000' and in a snow storm that night that kept collapsing our tent, when it was my turn to go out and shovel snow off the tent I decided to build an igloo instead. About an hour later I dragged my sleeping bag out of the tent and my two climbing partners realized I wasn't kidding and promptly joined me.

We decided to cache our tent there since I could build an igloo anywhere we had snow and we built our forth one at the 11,000' level and a part snowcave part igloo in the opening of a crevasse at about 13,000'. We aborted our attempt when one of the two people I was with got a serious bout of altitude sickness and said he was going to try to go down if me and the other guy tried for the summit.

We planned on descending all the way to our igloo at 11,000' but seems like during the five day storm another party used the igloo and didn't have the sense to go outside when nature called. It was full of "yellow snow" and "chocolate bars". We continued down to our 9,000' igloo where our tent awaited us for the return.

If you are into winter mountaineering and come upon an igloo or snow cave, please have the courtesy not to trash it. One good snow year on Mt Baldy we built an igloo just above Baldy Bowl in November and last used it in April (had to dig out the opening on several trips) and the last time we used it we dug down three feet and punched into the top of it to get in).

They make the absolute best winter time shelter and I advise anyone going into the mountains in the winter to learn how to make them. Don't wait until your survival depends on it as my first took about 5 hours with three other guys for an 8' diameter 4-person one. After building almost a hundred I can now build one for two people by myself in about 45 minutes.

On the Denali climb I was attributed by the High Altitude Medical Camp with saving the life of a Japanese climber that was coughing up blood while trying to descend when I ferried an oxygen bottle to him and helped him get through the night...his lips were as blue as the sky when I got to him.

To prepare for the climb, I worked as a ranger below sea level and in 100+ degrees temps in Death Valley at Furnace Creek.

Here is the whole story of that adventure including Chtistine Feret's own reply
http://www.summitpost.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=52001