2nd QUARTER 2003
EOG PEOPLE
B-7
We all crawled into the tents and slept until the better
part of noon. There would be no other constructive
activity during this, our eighth day on the mountain.
Thoughts of going back up for Mt. Churchill were
doused like a match with a bucket of water. It will
await us for another time, another group, another
project.
June 10 (Day 9). We descended to base camp in
one push. We all dragged nylon bags, filled with gear
we had stashed at Camps 1 and 2; too much to put into
our packs. I pulled a bag of trash. We poured out all the
white gas we had at Camp 2, but brought the rest of the
stuff down. We could take the unused gas canisters, a
propane-butane blend, back to REI for credit.
June 11 (Day 10). Our pilot, Paul Claus, picked us
up in the morning and flew us back to the real world.
Before he did so, he flew us over Mt. Bona, so we
could see where we had been. Turns out if we had
walked any further past the summit, thinking it was a
false one and the true one was higher but further, we
would have tumbled down a steep cliff. Good thing we
settled for the only thing that had appeared to be a
summit, and the map didn't show any signs of a falsie
either. When we got out of the Otter along the Chitina
River at Ultima Thule Lodge, elevation 1,500 feet, the
first thing to hit me was smell. Literally, we had not
smelled anything for 10 days. Trees, dirt, river, people,
lots of smells. Then
warmth, then noise.
Dogs yelped at us,
machinery moved
about, people were
talking, the river flowed
on by as if we didn't
even matter to it.
Out to Chitina that
afternoon, then we drove
ourselves in Paul's van
back to Anchorage.
Salmon, Halibut, King
crab, beer, it was all
good. Home on the next
day's midnight flight to
Denver, to get ready for
Mt. Hood in Oregon a
week later.
But that's another
story, and I digress...
n
We made it!
After a brief scare when they got lost on their way down,
all five crew members returned safely to Base Camp and
lived to tell the story.
Continued from previous page
into sleepy time? We slither out. Gerry is shaking
badly. Jobe said that Gerry's pit had been filling with
snow, and by 2:30 a.m. it was starting to cover him up.
Jobe had been kicking him for two hours to keep him
awake. Did I mention that Gerry can fall asleep and
start snoring, sitting up, in an airplane, minutes after
takeoff? Jobe says it has cleared up pretty well, and
sure enough, it has. Still blowing hard, but not any
snow in the air, other than the snow that blows along
the ground level, but we've learned by now to ignore
that. We can see we're in a valley south of where we
need to be, several hundred feet off of the plateau. We
would have wandered into crevasses in another quarter
mile or less. We had missed our heading by perhaps 10
degrees over the course of a mile, enough to slip us
over the south side of an east trending ridge that we
intended to stay on the north side of. The way home
was clear, although a mile is still a mile, and we were
tired and cold. Jobe rushed Gerry into his harness, onto
the rope, and I yelled at him to go; Larry and I would
get all our gear together and follow. Larry crawled
back in and started throwing out all the rope, gear, and
clothing we had sat on. We got ready, and by 3 a.m.
we, too, left. We snowshoed slowly uphill, sliding
backwards each step up. We finally made the top,
several hundred feet up, and it was flat. The
plateau! We could see
the small knoll above
our camp, a mile to the
east. It was slow going,
and Dick's cough had
worsened his condition
to barely existing. I
carried most of the gear,
simply because as Larry
threw it out of the cave,
I stuffed it all into my
pack. I led the way back,
with Larry in the middle,
encouraging Dick to
continue. Snoopy valiantly
rode atop Larry's pack,
keeping watch over us all.
4:30 a.m. Day 8. We
made it to camp, an hour
and a half to go a mile,
phill at first, then gently
downhill.
