Nov. 2nd, 2002

ASCENT Part I—Night at Midcamp

The morning started early: 4am. Edmond, Marc, Wilmer and a porter started out before the rest of the team to get a head start. David, Brian, Nathalie, Andy, Christian, Lorena and a couple of porters started out later at 6am.

We started our ascent at Inca City and made great time. By 10:30 am we met up with the Edmond and Marc. After resting for a bit at “La Roca Roja” (The Red Rock, or lunch rock as we called it) we resumed our journey to midcamp. We reached midcamp ahead of schedule and after lunch a few of us decide to try to summit that day.

Like clockwork, the winds began to pick up, and at about 5800 meters we were so cold and exhausted, we knew we would have to wait until the next day.

We returned to our mid camp where the shadow of the mountain began to cool our camp quite rapidly. With the wind chill, we all began to get very cold. By 5pm the group had gone into their tents, and did not come out until the following day.

Our dinner consisted of spaghetti, but it was so cold outside the tents, that no one wanted to get out for their plates! Marcus was kind enough to serve all of us through our tent doors (as small as we could make them!). We all agreed that the view that our mid camp had, was something none of us had ever or would ever experience again.

Overnight it was very cold. The wind blew at 40 mph all night and reduced the temperature to -10 to 20 degrees Celsius.

At one point we measured the temperature in our tent at 24 degrees F! Outside it was 14 degrees with a wind chill that put the temperature into the single and negative digits.