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Headed for the Summit
Thursday, June 29, 2000

A Season on Denali Denali
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Hi this is Bill McCormick with AAI trip number six at High Camp, 17,000 feet. And we have company here! We have Tom and Matt from trip number eight. They just did a carry up here.

Other good news: Willi's group did head for the summit. The weather has broken, we're looking down on a sea of clouds. We're in the sunshine, a very slight breeze, and hopefully they're just having a great time out there and maybe on their way down. So, here's Tom:

Tom Bridge
Wahoo! Well, we're a little bit out of breath from our climb today, coming all the way up from 14, and pretty challenging snow conditions we had. Four to six inches and some of that has drifted around. We saw a couple of avalanches today. One of which missed us by about three feet on the fixed line. It was a slight sluff.

We're looking down at some major-looking avalanches going down Rescue Gulley here and we can't see 14 Camp where other members are — they're on a rest day today. We came up and carried some food up from 16.2 up to 17.2, and we're headed back down here real shortly.

We're just visiting with Bill here and having some nice tea and enjoying the wonderful view of Mount Foraker and the beautiful sea of clouds, that Bill mentioned, that's right below. You can see the whole upper ridge here, Washburn Thumb, and just the upper part of the fixed ropes and then nothing more below.

If Willi went for it today — looks like he did — it looks like he might have lucked out. It was looking real iffy this morning and right now it's looking like it'd be really nice to be on the summit right now. And he'll probably be getting there pretty soon and he might be giving you guys a call, so you'll know more than we will.

That's about all I've got to say, other than, here's my partner Matt here that helped drag me up here today and he's going to talk to you for a while. We'll see you later.

Matt Szundy
Hey AAI, let me introduce our team. We have Brian from Boulder. We have another Brian from Seattle who's actually doing a nonprofit fund-raising thing called Climb for Life, climbforlife.com, check it out. And we've got Jackie, and Laurie, Tom's wife. And we have Kwan, Tom, myself, and who'd I miss? Jay, can't forget Jay.

And so anyway, we'll be in touch with you soon. We're going to be planning on moving to High Camp tomorrow or to 16.2, depending on the weather, depending on how Willi did, and we'll definitely be in touch. So, we're going to go take hot showers now and have some [Unintelligible] take care. Bye.

Bill McCormick, Tom Bridge, and Matt Szundy , Alpine Ascents International, MountainZone.com Correspondents


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