We're into our fourth day in this tent. It is 42 F outside, half raining, half snowing, and foggy. This is getting real old.
Last evening we thought our luck had finally changed. I had decided to take a short hike about 2:00 p.m. since the rain had slowed down some. I wore my rain gear but after an hyour or so it quit raining completely and even looked like the cloud cover was breaking up to the north. By about 5:00 p.m., we could see our shadows.
I spent a couple of hours trying to get a closer look at some dall sheep I had spotted about a 1/4 mile from camp. I walked in a large semicircle just below the ridge line so that I wouldn't be spotted. Unfortunately my path was upwind of the sheep and when I finally peered over a small rise close to them, the ram was looking straight at me. He quickly aroused the two ewes and they left the scene, looking rather annoyed about the whole situation.
By the time I returned to the tent, Jack and Mike were ready to get out for awhile. We were surprised that even though the sun was shining through the clouds and the temperature had risen to 52 F, there were still no mosquitos to bother us. We fixed a delicious dinner of beef stroganoff and corn and polished it all off with hot chocolate. We managed to get a few photographs for the benefit of Dri-Lite Foods who had provided most our food at a very low cost.
After dinner we had a smoke and walked further up the ridge line overlooking our camp to the level of the fog which obscured the high peaks. It was a beautiful view from that perspective. The valleys were filled with a thick fog; only the ridge lines were clear. The lower fog ended at about 4,000 feet and it was clear in all directions until about 7,000 feet where another layer of clouds obscured the summits.
We returned to camp, had a snort of brandy, and spent the next 2 or 3 hours watching the sun slide across the horizon to the north. We were hoping that the high clouds would dissipate and we could make an attempt at the summit that evening. We walked down to the glacier and found it to have a hard, grainy surface despite all the rain. By 1:00 a.m. this morning the clouds above us were still thick and a shot at the summit was out of the question. We went to bed, expecting to awake to sunny skies this morning, and planning to leave late this afternoon for the top of Mt. Michelson.
I really don't understand how, because at 1:00 a.m. the weather looked so promising, but by 3:00 a.m. it was raining. It is now after 1:00 p.m. and it hasn't stopped yet. Once again we are trapped in the tent with no sign of a change in the weather.
Food is becoming a real concern. We left basecamp with 5 days food supply. We have been gone now for 4 days and we projected it would take 2 days to get from here to the summit and back down to basecamp. If the weather doesn't change real soon we will either have to start going hungry or descend to basecamp.
No comments:
Post a Comment