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960 Pounds of Gear Takes Off
Team 3: Talkeetna - Friday, May 17, 2002
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Hello, it's Friday, May 17. This is Alpine Ascents Denali Team 3. This is John Race filing the report. I'm the expedition leader and Terry Ahern is my assistant. Climbing with us will be Jake Kirby, Jon Starbecker, Susana Vivares, Houck Reed, Ashley Noonan and Greg Jacobus.

It is 2:50 in the afternoon. We all met this morning at 8 o'clock and we spent the day packing, getting organized, doing what other groups do and we are planning to fly on to the Southeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier within a half an hour. That would have us leaving Talkeetna at 3:15 if the flight in is clear which is looks like it is. It's a beautiful day here in Talkeetna; that would put us all on the mountain a little after 4 o'clock.

"We are heading up with 21 days worth of food, we have probably 960 pounds of gear between the eight of us and if all goes well we will be back here in talkeetna 16 to 21 days from today..."

We haven't selected a group name yet, we'll work on that tonight and call it in as soon as we have good cell coverage. Everybody looks great, seems strong. Everybody has all sorts of 'hi's' and hello's' for their family which I'm asking them to hold onto until we have a little bit more time to compose a good dispatch.

We are looking forward to having a great trip. We are heading up with 21 days worth of food, we have probably 960 pounds of gear between the eight of us and if all goes well we will be back here in Talkeetna 16 to 21 days from today. And we'll be checking in with you guys as we go. Everything looks fantastic and we're all psyched to get on the mountain and get away from all the chaos of packing and finally get this thing underway.

So we will be talking to you soon. It will probably be a few days until we can call in because when we're down low on the Kahiltna the cell coverage isn't great, but once we get up high enough to call out, which could actually be four or five days from now, we'll give you guys a call.

Okay, talk to you soon. Bye.

John Race, Alpine Ascents International Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent