14,200 Feet! (4,328 meters to the rest of the world)

Woohoo! The team was up at 5 a.m. Thursday morning and climbed throughout the day, reaching their new site at 14,200 feet. The weather was sunny, clear and hot. They have to take precautions against sunburn; Kevin described the sun as "brutal". They get a chance to cool off at night; usually temps are around 15 degrees. Fans of weather tracking can follow the conditions at various altitudes at the National Weather Service Mt. McKinley site.

Speaking of cool sites, PBS has a feature-filled site for their Nova documentary, the alarmingly titled "Deadly Ascent". Try not to let that dissuade you from checking it out. Or wait until they're back down and watch it together with popcorn and apples. (Which is how my mom and I like it.)

Back to the team: Today, they went back to bring stuff they had cached between camps up to the 14,200 ft. camp. They will be resting and acclimating at this camp over the next 3-4 days. They will be building a snow wall and generally making camp life comfortable.