Peter Stanley Mt. McKinley

(Camp III, 11,200 ft.) It's now later. The progression was that we went on through a whiteout... we took off even though it was snowing and raining a little bit. We were confronted with whiteout conditions as we took our light load back up to where we had cached all our equipment. I noted that an awful lot of the stuff that I had had in stuff bags had gotten soaking wet. Anyway we loaded all of that gear up and having departed from 7,900 feet we are now making camp (Camp III) at about 11,400. We've risen 3,500 feet today and we will camp here again tomorrow night for acclimatization purposes. I don't quite know how to pinpoint where we are on the map. From where we are we go up a very steep incline. I guess we will abandon the sleds. The sleds are no longer useful. It was a real backbreaker pulling them up on this last haul. We hiked for a solid, I guess, eight hours and feel genuinely tired... or at least I do. We can no longer see the summit of McKinley. When we arrived at this little bowl... which is a bowl from which we have to proceed up a steep grade in an approximately... in an easterly direction. At the top of that grade... it looks like it is about a quarter of a mile long... we turn a sharp right and then head up toward Windy Corner, I understand. When we got here my guesstimate is that it was about 15 degrees and blowing at about thirty miles an hour. Sam and I put up tents and Stuart and Matthew dug an ice cave... or snow cave... which I am a little leery of because it could cave in. My hands were really cold. It seems like a really hostile environment but subsequently we have really tamed it. We've put up the Everest tents... both of these Jansport tents were on the Mt. Everest expedition. We are walking on two ropes. It's Eric, Larry, Sam & Stuart... on the second rope Jeff, myself and Matthew. I was mentioning that the weather was pretty abusive when we first got here, but since then the temperature has risen to... I don't know... the sun's really baking down. Clouds are just swarming out of a pass and occasionally blow up here, but the inside of the tent Sam and I figure is 65 or 70 degrees because of the sun's heat.

(At Camp III, 11,200 ft.) It is now July 3rd, early in the morning... about 8:30, actually. We went to bed and got a full 12 hours sleep, or darn close to it last night which really felt great. I got up to "relieve" myself. It's snowing... temperature maybe 20 degrees. I've got on long johns, my down booties, neoprene overboots and my pile jacket. God! What gorgeous country this is! It's also very cold, so I'm going to head back to the tent. The wind's blowing pretty hard. Eric says we can handle a carry today in spite of the fact that the weather's not that great. I can't even see my tent at this point. I don't know where it is... there it is! This is just gorgeous country... this whole experience is just great! I really want to get out and do some winter camping with the kids... Christopher, George and Jimmy, who are not really "kids" so much anymore. But they should experience this.

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