click here for MountainZone.com



Climbing Forum

SEE ALSO
Greenland '98
Denali '99
Ed Viesturs
Climbs 8K Peaks

Everest '99
Everest Archives






home
dispatches
photos
maps

One Helluva Whiteout
Monday, June 14, 1999 — 10:37am (PST)

Todd
Burleson
Hear Todd's Call from Greenland
Click for
[RealAudio]  [Windows Media]

(Requires FREE
RealPlayer or Windows Media)


Hey everybody, it's Todd. We're actually back in Base. We took the phone up high yesterday. It got really cold and a storm came in. We got on the ridge of Gunnbjornsfjeld, but we didn't make the summit. And the phone was too cold to use so we skied back down.

It was a hell of a whiteout we had. There's a big plateau up there at about 11,000'...ten-and-a-half, and we were in complete whiteout trying to find our way back to High Camp which took quite awhile. We had to navigate with compass and altimeter and finally came across our tracks—made life a lot easier to follow some tracks left, there were a few, a little bit we could see where the wind hadn't completely blown it over. We had to watch out for crevasses as we were skiing down.

And now we're back in Base. We slept that last night up at about 9000', and this morning got up, it was still snowing this morning. We got about four or five inches of powder last night which made for excellent skiing coming down. We were pulling sleds which was a little tricky, but the powder was great and very forgiving.

We're here in Base. The weather has become beautiful. The wind now has switched from the north, so it seems like our weather's going to be really stable for awhile.

Everybody's doing great. [I] called Akureyri...Willie's there with the next group. So they're going to fly on out and hopefully climb all these peaks this next trip around. So Wally and I are talking. One of us will stay with Willie. We're not sure right now.

But everybody's doing great and we're cooking pasta and life is beautiful. It's sunny; the sun's right overhead. It's about 7pm and we're looking forward to doing some more climbing. I think right now we're going to go out and do a few runs on the side of the mountain. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.

Alpine Ascents Guide Todd Burleson, MountainZone.com Correspondent


EXPEDITION DISPATCHES


[MountainZone.com Home] [Climbing Home] [Greenland '98]
[Climb Greenland With AAI]