Rob DesLauriers  John Falkiner  Frederik Jacobi  Kit Katzenbach  Ace Kvale  Kasha Rigby  Scot Schmidt  Jim Zellers

Katzenbach

Hear Kit's Call

It seems like the [inaudible] ... it took us six hours to reach this hut here. These mountains are huge, enormous in size for a 15,000ft peak — which sounds small, but this place is huge. All eight of us are up here at this hut plus our two Russian friends and two Russians who work at the Akkem Base Camp; they work there for one month stints.

So we have 12 people here right now and one dog. It's tight in there and the ice is melting off the walls and the ceiling and dripping on us, but it's warm because we are so many. There's no heat. It's maybe minus 15 or 20 outside and we eat Russian 'Snickers' to keep warm which is basically uncooked salted pork fat as appetizers before our soup.

Our plan is for tomorrow to have a team hike and ski some shots around here which is on the north face, we are right under the north face of Mt. Belukha. And another team of us will go ahead on our climbing route and scout for difficulties and maybe fix some lines. Then we will go back to Base Camp but leave some gear up here, have one rest day, and then hope for good weather and come back up and continue on to the summit.

And if you can say 'hi mom and dad from Kit' at the end of the dispatch, I would appreciate it. So we're signing off from the Tomski Hut. Goodbye.

— Kit Katzenbach, skier, mountaineer and EMT

EXPEDITION DISPATCHES