To Zee Top 2

Yesterday, June 14, at about 2pm the whole team flew off the glacier and back to Talkeetna. Joe and I then shuttled back to Anchorage at 6pm to catch our red-eye flights back home. The rest of the team decided to stay the night in Talkeetna (the climbing town with a drinking problem) and will return to the lower 48 in the coming days.

Also, thank you to all who read the posts and commented. Your support and encouragement were greatly appreciated!

Following is an elaboration on the posts covering our last few days on the mountain. Just to fill in the gaps. 

Around 2pm we decide to move down from 14 camp and make our way to 7800 camp. The falling snow and the 10 inches of fresh snow already on the ground require us to break trail from the get go. Not much fun in crampons. Near whiteout conditions also ensue. After about 4 hours of slow going we reach the flat area below Windy Corner and above Squirrel Hill. The elevation is about 13,000' and is often used as a cache site. Given the conditions we decide to pitch a couple tents (4 sleep in Dave's "Taj Mahal" and 3 in a VE25) and wait until morning to proceed down. We are also hoping a group from 11 camp ascends up to our position so we do not have to break trail. Throughout the evening we hear several avalanches off in the distance, no where near our dwellings. Then at 10:45 things get interesting. A small sluff avalanche (not a slab avalanche) broke loose and stopped more than 100 feet from our tents. The ripple or domino effect from the slide causes a large amount of snow to impact both tents. Dave's tent (and the 4 inhabitants) was moved a few inches, the pole in the vestibule was snapped in half and snow piled up 1-2 feet around the entrance. Bill did yeoman's work in digging out the tent. The incident severely limited the amount of restful sleep that night. 

The morning was spent waiting for the sun to hit our tents and for a group from 11 camp to break trail. A guided group finally arrived about noon and we made our way down to 11 camp. While waiting for Ken and Stony to come down Motorcycle Hill to 11 camp we feasted on crackers, sausage, cheese -- all the heavy food we could find. If you don't eat it you have to carry it! At around 6pm the whole team heads down to the lower Kahiltna. Ken, Stony and I are headed for 7800 camp while the rest of the team has decided to walk all the way to Base camp (where they proceed to drink more than their fair share of the beer that we cached). 

Ken, Stony and I depart 7800 camp at 5am and arrive at Base camp at 9am, joining the rest of the (hungover) team. After watching several glacier landing flights (tourists have about 15 minutes to walk around on the glacier and take photos) arrive and depart our plane finally arrives and takes the entire team plus one other climber (and all our packs and bags) to Talkeetna. Turns out poor weather in Talkeetna had prevented us from getting out earlier in the day. And we were lucky to get out when we did because the weather was deteriorating fast as we flew out.