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Forced to Descend
Team 4: 14,200 Feet - Thursday, June 13, 2002
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Szundy
Szundy
DISPATCHES
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Howdy MountainZoners and Alp 4 friends and family, this is Matt Szundy calling from 14,000-foot camp. That's right we descended from high camp in moderate winds expecting higher winds.

Yesterday's windchill factor of -50 combined with day 19 of our trip forced us to descend the ridge, as well as a pretty nasty weather forecast for the next four days. So we are down at 14,000-foot camp and will be descending to 8,000-foot camp this afternoon and spending the evening there until the lower glacier gets hard and crispy at about midnight and we'll make it into base camp early this morning, probably 4am or so and plan on flying out tomorrow morning.

"The crew is, again, a little disappointed at not having a summit attempt, but we've just had a really horrendous period of weather..."

So unfortunately we did not summit, however the team is in decent spirits. All things considered we had a great trip. The crew is, again, a little disappointed at not having a summit attempt, but we've just had a really horrendous period of weather.

Today is actually a very clear day but winds up high are increasing up to potentially 50 or 60 knots. I know there are people going for the summit today, but keep in touch with Eric's cybercast. Alp 5 and 6 are at high camp, we saw them yesterday and they're going to go for it in the next few days hopefully.

So anyway, for the Dozy Bonkers, this is Matt Szundy calling in from 14.2 and this is the conclusion of our trip. We'll probably have a post-trip cybercast from Talkeetna. Take care, thanks for watching. Bye.

Matt Szundy, Alpine Ascents International Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent