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Spectre of the Brocken
Wednesday, June 28, 2000

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Good morning, this is Bill McCormick with Alpine Ascents International trip number six. It's Wednesday morning, we are in a bit of a fog, but it's not too thick. The sun's showing through in a rare phenomenon called spectre of the Brocken: It's where the sun is behind you shining your shadow on a rainbow of circular aurora on the clouds in the opposite direction.

And our situation is we are getting up right now, brewing up and hopefully it will allow a summit attempt. Yesterday it was unsettled with a big lenticular, meaning high winds on the summit. So we just laid low, dubbed our camp "Patience Camp" kind of in honor of Shackleton and his expedition on the ship, the Endurance, was trapped in the packed ice and they just had to wait for the right time to move into their boats and sail to Elephant Island.

Things are really going pretty well; everybody's feeling well and that's about it. Hopefully, we'll have, you know, some positive news later tonight or early in the morning. Willi Prittie's group is very well settled in here. Tom Bridge is at 14. That's about it for now, thank you.

Bill McCormick, Alpine Ascents International, MountainZone.com Correspondent


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