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

Ace Kvale

Hear Ace's Call

The first thing we did was stop at a place and bought honey from a local farmer. Everybody filled up their water bottles with honey and we ate honey with our cheese, all of us today. Then we stopped and bought some [unintelligible] ... cheese and bread and honey was it... [unintelligible].

It was a really beautiful day. It kind of connected the whole mountain to where we are, because when we went in, we flew in the helicopter. So to come out by skiing along the river and travel by bus for miles and miles, little villages and sometimes there would be a shop or something on the road and it gives us a better idea of all this.

And now we're at a little resort, pretty close to a town called [unintelligible]. It's a little tiny mountain resort and we just had dinner in the bar — some salad, and it's kind of a disco. It's kind of outrageous actually. Everybody is pretty tired. Things have been going great.

Everybody is completely shattered from travelling. You know, with us and a bunch of Russians and a couple drivers there's about probably 1000 pounds of gear and 17 of us on a bus hardly bigger than a mini van and we're just sleeping everywhere, on top of each other and all our boots and everybody is completely wiped out, but things are going great, and we're still making our way back to Barnaul. Another day of travel tomorrow on a bus and then we'll be flying back to Moscow. So, that's it from the Altai Expedition for tonight. Bye.

— Ace Kvale, Mountain Zone Correspondent

EXPEDITION DISPATCHES