Day 56
   
   6/22/01
   Kahiltna Base Camp, Denali
   
   Mike arrived to meet me in Talkeetna this morning, with hundreds of
   pounds of gear in duffel bags.  There was a lot of sorting to do,
   hours worth, and also some of the gear I would be using was on the bike and
   was "double duty" equipment.  Next was loading the gear onto the ski-plane
   for transport to the Kahiltna glacier.  We had chosen Talkeetna Air
   Taxi to get us to that point.  About 6pm we took off in a ski-equipped
   Beaver plane - not very fast but rugged and with a lot of cargo
   capacity.
   
   We flew past the land of green, into the land of white.  For the rest
   of our time on the mountain, there would be no trees, no plants,
   nothing but rock and ice.  Nothing to eat besides what we had brought; no raw
   materials to construct anything with besides snow.
   
   Landing on the glacier was an interesting, and bouncy, experience.
   The "runway" (just an area markered off with poles) was at a considerable
   grade upwards, and at this low altitude (7200') the snow is fairly
   soft.  At the end, the pilot twisted the plane around to point downgrade, and
   we had arrived at base camp.
   
   Essentially what happened here was, all the gear was chucked out onto
   the snow, and that pilot was outta here.
   
   Mike and I stood there, thinking, "OK, guess we're committed", while
   watching the plane fade into the distance.  We  moved our gear off the
   runway area.  The sun was still in the sky, and this makes the snow
   soft, which causes it to be less safe to travel across the glacier at this
   time.  Crevasses are just a few hundred feet from base camp, and soft
   snow means unstable ice bridges, so we decided to wait until the wee
   hours of the morning to start heading across the glacier.  We set up camp to
   get a few hours of sleep.  We'd need it.

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