9
“We’ve got to make camp,” Caspar declared and Mick couldn’t agree more.
The snow was falling hard and visibility was rarely more than a fifty feet. They’d made it down from thirteen- to ten-thousand feet before daylight failed them, but there was no chance of a helo evac.
The two other climbing teams were still too far below them to connect up. The mid-level climbing team had been stopped by a bad icefall and forced to break trail wide around it. The lower team had reached the starting point of the mid-level team but that was all.
Command deemed the “survivor” to be sufficiently stabilized that it wasn’t worth the risk of a nighttime descent. Everyone would be spending the night on the mountain and they’d all link up in morning.
There wasn’t any such thing as a level spot at ten tho
