SEE ALSO
Greenland '98
Denali '99
Ed Viesturs
Climbs 8K Peaks
Everest '99
Everest Archives
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Golden Midnight
Wednesday, June 23, 1999 — 5:09pm (PST)
 Prittie | |
Hello Mountain Zone, this is Willi calling from Greenland again. [I'm] sitting here really enjoying the golden midnight sunrise glistening off of peaks with lots of freshly fallen snow here.
We're actually back at Base Camp. Yesterday, after our really nice climb of Gunnbjornsfjeld, we'd left a wand trail up to the pass in anticipation of maybe going up and doing something further up there today. I should emphasize it's a really wonderful, aesthetic climb up there. And Sal Pomponi, at 70½ yearsold, and Richard Tracy, at 69 years old, turned in a very strong showing on the climb—only five and a half hours from our camp to the summit. It's really a pleasure to climb with guys like that, and I hope when I get old and feeble, I can do that well—like maybe tomorrow or the next day.
Anyway, we woke up this morning and had a lot of lenticulars all over the sky and things were closing down pretty fast. And Wally and I had a quick confab[ulation] and seeing as we had only a couple days worth of supplies left that we would hightail it out of High Camp and try to make it back down to Base Camp. And we did that in pretty good time. It took us about three and a half hours for the ski, about 6.8 miles, to get back down here.
However, it was less than desirable conditions, to say the least. We actually did get whited out, some grayout conditions, mostly whiteout conditions. And [we] pretty much lost our wand trail with all the fresh snow that had fallen. So we used a combination of compass bearings and GPS way points and made it back here all safe and sound and in one piece. And it was definitely a comforting thing to see this tent that we left back here kind of appear through the mist.
At any rate, we're all back safe and sound at Base Camp, and we've got probably a good foot plus of beautiful, light powder to do some skiing in here. I think I might actually go up and take a midnight ski run just after I get off the phone to you guys. Matter of fact, that sounds like a really good idea. I don't know why I'm sitting here in the snow talking on the phone when I could be skiing down the snow instead. We'll talk to you guys later. Bye.
— Alpine Ascents Guide Willi Prittie, MountainZone.com Correspondent
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[Climb Greenland With AAI]