Day 61
   
   6/27/01
   17,200' Camp, Denali
   
   By morning, I had made my decision, and decided not to wait for
   another acclimatization day.  I would continue up the mountain, solo.
   
   I hurriedly sorted gear, melted snow, ate, and deposited a large cache.
   I packed up the tent, took a look around, and...headed up the slope to
   the Headwall.
   
   Was I really going to do this?  Solo up a mountain I'd never been on
   before?  I ran through dozens of "reality checks" in my head, trying
   to find fault, and I could certainly find a number of them.  It ended up
   being a matter of plainly accepting a certain amount of risk, and
   continuing anyway.  Onward and upward.
   
   I passed a Dutch team moving very slowly.  They had heavy packs since
   they were a sponsored expedition by JVC and thus had many pounds of
   video equipment.  I asked them if they needed anything, and they
   requested that I go on ahead and tell their other members who were at the next
   camp to send someone down for relief to help carry packs.  They had CB
   radios, but were out of range in all the twists and turns of the
   mountain.
   
   After a while I came to the fixed ropes, which lead to the top of the
   headwall.  I used a Petzl Tibloc as my ascender, and it worked fairly
   well.  It was slow but fun work going up the lines, and after a while
   I reached the top of the headwall and unclipped.
   
   It was much colder and windier now that I was in the open breeze, and
   I put on additional layers of clothing.  At 16,200', this was a primary
   area on the mountain to cache gear, but there was nothing for me to
   cache here as I had only the things I already needed.  I ate some food
   and continued upward to Washburn's Thumb.  This section is also very
   steep, and a few shorter fixed ropes are here.  At times I was hugging up
   against vertical rocks while negotiating narrow ledges, trying not to
   have my pack catch on something and twist me around, making me fall off the
   mountain.  I was carrying a heavier pack than most since I was doing a
   single-carry up the mountain; usually climbers double-carry, meaning
   they split the load in half and cache it high, then descend and bring
   up the remainder later.  I considered this section one of the more dicey
   parts to be doing solo.
   
   After about two hours of this I arrived into the thin air of the
   17,200' camp.  This camp can take the full brunt of weather for days
   at a time, so no corners can be cut on digging in the tent for a storm.  I
   used a combination of snow anchors (small parachute-like devices), a
   picket, and some ice screws to get as solid an arrangement I could.  As it so
   happened, I would end up needing it.
   
   I cooked my meal and retired for the night, carefully keeping my water
   bottles inside my sleeping bag so they did not freeze overnight.
   Frost soon covered the tent.

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