The Return of Mule Man and Little Boy
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We got underway a little after 5am. We hoped to get all the way up and down Gothics, ending up at the Gothics-Saddleback col for our first and hopefully only bivy. Our plan was to get to that specified bivy, get up early on day two, get down the last tricky descents on Saddleback and Basin, summit Marcy probably in fading light, and walk all the way out from Marcy late on day two. We'd go all night if we had to. Personally, I really loathed the idea of doing more than two days out. I don't really know why, other than I didn't want to carry any more food or excess gear than I had to.
We had reduced our loads to the minimum we felt was safe. We took bivy sacks to ease setup in camp, light bags, an axe and crampons for each, food for two days and very little else. We agreed to bring one 50m half rope, two 12' rap cords, two pins, two slings and one Ti leaver screw for drilling Abalokov threads (and a #2 stopper for pulling cord) if necessary. We brought this gear for the descents (which we did not see the year before, since we hadn't gotten that far) we'd need to tackle between Gothics and Basin. This turned out to be a very good decision, despite the weight. James was as strong as ever. I was moving along better than last year, but James... he's still a mule. Mule forever. James the Mule Man. The guy broke trail about 80% of the trip. I tried to contribute, but he'd just sort of barrel through after a while. He didn't seem to mind, and we were moving at a good pace. And how very convenient. Seriously, I owe James a lot for doing a huge amount of work on the trip. We wouldn't have gotten as far as we did if he hadn't been so willing to suffer. |
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