Team Meeting & Gear Checks

Met the entire team today and we discussed strategy and logistics in the morning. It is a internationally diverse group, with a lot of climbing experience.

Afterwards we completed our last minute gear checks and loaded up lunch food. My entire load excluding group gear which I’ll get tomorrow, is 89lbs which is great news. Even if I get 40 lbs of group gear, I’m still close to 50lbs lighter than last year on gear alone. Add in another 15 for myself and that is 65lbs less I’ll be dragging up the mountain

Weather permitting we will be on the glacier tomorrow. The expedition planned schedule is June 8th till June 30th.

Weather has been very uncooperative this season and the summit success rates so far are 39%. You can follow the stats as they change as well as get conditions on the mountain posted by the park rangers here: http://www.nps.gov/dena/mountainblog.htm

What is “The Danger Network”?
It is the system that I use to update my blog from the mountain. The technical details would bore most folks, but for the rest of you here it is. I use a network of highly trained weasels that can carry short 160 character messages (weasels have limited memory) back and forth and even allow my global position to be tracked. Once we start up the mountain this Tuesday I will be updating the Adventure Blog during the expedition via weasel-net and these updates will also be sent to your inbox. Sometimes the weasels make mistakes, so please forgive the inevitable typos.

Why Am I Getting This?
You are on this list either because you subscribed yourself or because we have some sort of affiliation and I thought you might be interested. Maybe I’m wrong and you don’t even like me. In that case, visit the unsubscribe link at the bottom and you will be unsubscribed , removed from my Christmas list and stricken from my will (Yes, I was going to leave you something). It’s too late to change your mind now, that ship has sailed.

Real Time Tracking Map:
The weasels will be released and the tracking map we will begin populating on Monday the 8th when we start climbing.

Supporter Shout Out!
A big thanks to Grab The Gold who supplied 30lbs of their delicious and all natural snack bars for the team. We will burn 5,000-6,000 calories a day while climbing, and these are, fast, easy, great tasting and the weasels love em!

And Lifeproof who hooked me up with the new Nuud (It’s not as risqué as it sounds) versions of their fantastic waterproof cases, which have served me well. If you have not seen them, the design is very elegant.

Of course without the competent team of IT professionals at Truewater none of this would be possible. They are so good at their jobs that nobody notices when I leave, so I added them to this mail list to remind them. I will be carrying a flag up the mountain with each staff members name on it so the entire Truewater team is going to the top with me!