The Route.
The ascent will start from the Kahiltna glacier, 2200 m.
The team will be brought here by air planes. The Base Camp
would be organized at 3600 m. The first high camp would be
located at 4300 m. The expedition will travel to the "Camp
4300" along the classic route. The length of this section
is more than 20 km. Starting from 3000 m, the members of the
team will begin to hang fixed lines (ropes). We plan to stay
at the "Camp 4300" for several days to acclimitize and to
pull over our equipment to the next camps.
The next stage of the ascent will greatly differ from the
classic route. The participants will climb along the Rescue
Gulley, usually used by rangers for rescue works. The Rescue
Gulley is much steeper than the usual route (there are 50–55°
slopes). But this route allows to avoid the sharp ridge and
rocks outcrops. In order to do this we will hang double ropes
along the whole slope (1300 m), starting from 4700 m, and
thus considerably speeding up an ascent and providing maximum
safety.
We will make one more high camp at 5200 m and plan to reach
the summit from this camp in two days. The route is chosen,
basing on the specific features of the expedition: all sections
with traverses would be passed by frontal attacks, along the
vertical lines. We have chosen the pre-summit plateau Football
Field (6000 m) for our intermediate overnight. We suppose
that this overnight could be a very crucial one, as it is
very difficult to make a camp at this elevation due to thin
air and hurricane winds.
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