Go Time (Hardwear Sessions)

By Ben Clark

May 7, 2008

Twisting wisps of wind dance along the solemn northwest ridgeline of Annapurna IV. Playfully the dance has drawn us in forcing us to question, will the jet stream push away these little snow devils and surge the ridgeline with the power of a hurricane or will we enter a window of opportunity? We will be there to see, we begin the ascent tomorrow.

Basecamp is slowly drying day be day as summer's short season approaches. Today, as the mountain emerged from it's cloudy blanket, the wind and snow dissipated while we racked our gear, dried our boots and prepared our packs for the altitude above. We are going light,by necessity, and are prepared for a single push effort to the summit that will ideally take 4 days.

The route will go, if not directly then with some excursions around 300' long gaping crevasses-holes in the glacier. Three reconnaissance trips to 17,000' and above have given us a valuable look into what the complexity of the route will entail. If we go for the summit in the next 4 days we will have a little ice climbing some,hard breathing and the cherry on top---we can ski the usually technical pyramid of rock via two chutes choked with snow Sweet huh?

It sounds great as a working theory of course, go up go down,ski and go home. Perhaps the mountain will be tamer now, but we are ready for anything.

The style which the three of us utilize should entertain us and give us a net of safety. We climb most routes from bottom to top, onsight-meaning we've not been on it-and free. Free climbing this way has been a real pleasure for Josh and myself and going from low altitude to ridiculously high and fast has worked well for Tim and me.

The three of us are really lucky to be here together and of course...to have such supportive wives, children, families and friends. We will do our best, the mountain is as alive as we are so if it moves us closer to it's top the next e-mail dispatch you'll get will be quite lengthy but full of joy. Should we get knocked around by the potentially approaching jet-we'll drop back down to here and give it another go when the weather is good.

We are not ruling bad weather out, but we feel we can risk going higher during this weather to capitalize on position if it is good. Stay tuned via audio dispatches from the mountain. We will be carrying the sat-phone with us and reporting our progress.