D-day: Climb for Clean Air
This is it. The day is finally here. Today is my climbing day.
I woke up antsy, and nervous. I know I’m ready, but I can’t help to feel the anxiety and all of this ‘what-if’ thought in my head. The weather supposed to be decent and those strong winds supposed to slow down. I’m still crossing my finger for it since the mountain weather can change faster than you even realize.
Today’s agenda is to go to Camp Muir (10,080ft). We are going to meet the rest of the team at 9:15am at Paradise and start to walk at 10am. It will take approximately 6 hours to get to Camp Muir. We are going to take a break every hour for 15-20 minutes. When we get to Camp Muir, we are going to rest, rehydrate and being horizontal (sleep is optional). We are going to start our upper mountain climb somewhere between midnight – 1am.
Disappointment Cleaver is the route we are going to go through. There will be three break from Camp Muir to the Summit, and they are Ingraham Flat (11,200ft), Disappointment Cleaver (12,300ft) and High Break (13,500ft). At the summit, depend on the weather – we could take an hour break or touch the rim and head back down. The whole trip from Muir to Summit take somewhere between 6-7 hours.
I will try to send a check-in every break to all of you who already on the list for my ‘basecamp’ person. Please forward that check-in to anybody else that you think need to know. This check-in will also posted at my Facebook page and on twitter (#GoYanni)
You can also follow my progress live. My GPS (Spot Connect) will continuously upload my coordinate via satellite to their server, which will update the page. The URL for my live progress is:
http://tinyurl.com/FollowYanni
Today’s climb is not an easy feat. It’s a hard, and tough and I’ll be hiking for a long time. It will be cold, very cold. There’s a lot of crevasse around, as well as loose rock. There’s always a possibility of avalanche. I can go on and on, and no, I’m not trying to scare my mom here. I’m just being realistic. However, I’ll be doing this with a professional guide services who know what they are doing. I know I’m in a good hand. I have trained for this day, and learned and learned more. Having said that, I am requesting everybody’s prayer for John and I safe and strong climb. For our strength and for coming back home safely with our ten fingers and toes. Please send us your positive energy, your warm thought and wish us luck.
Thank you, very very much for all of your support. This is a joint effort. All of you are climbing with me in spirit.
It’s GO time.
Good luck and thanks for all the details. I had no idea of the hours involved. I will be following you on Twitter.
Good luck, Yanni. We’ll be cheering for you every step of the way!
I broke the DB. Enjoy your descent 🙂