The team is on the glacier and moving up!

The team flew to the Southeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier on Tuesday, after spending one rainy night in Talkeetna.

They spent one night at Base Camp (7,200') before packing up camp and moving up glacier. The ironic thing is that moving up initially means moving DOWN, as the Southeast Fork drops about 600' before it joins the Kahiltna Glacier. This hill is called "Heartbreak Hill"for its seemingly never-ending incline on the return trip back up it.

The Kahiltna Glacier is not giving up easy passage these days, as sparse new snow has made for some fairly thin snow bridges that cover some deep crevasses. We've heard reports of a few folks poking thorough, into crevasses, however I haven't heard of any incidents from our team.

Camp 1 is located at about 7,800 feet, at the junction with the Northeast Fork of the Kahiltna. It is a broad, spacious camping area at the base of a large hill, affectionately called "Ski Hill".

The team most likely packed up their extra food, fuel and clothes and carried it up Ski Hill and along the Kahiltna to a spot at about 10,200 feet where they buried it in the snow (making a cache). They returned back to Camp 1 and spent the night before packing up camp to move up to Camp 2 at 11,200 feet.

I don't have any definite word on the team, as cell phones don't get very good service on the lower glacier. I expect to hear from them over the weekend. We received word that they are at Camp 2, at 11,200 feet, which is located in a beautiful, glaciated basin.

I expect that they dropped back down to pick their cache up today and are therefore having a fairly easy, "active" rest-day. Tomorrow they should carry another cache up around Windy Corner at 13,500' to bury it at about 13,700'. We might hear from them tomorrow, as they might get pout on their cell phones from above Windy Corner.

One climber has left the team, with a case of pneumonia. Having suffered with pnuemonia on Denali one time myself, I can say that he made a good choice in not trying to push on. Your immune system is compromised at altitude and you do not heal up there. Our sympathies are with him, but he made the only good decision available to him.