So we trod up the wide, open bowl to 10,000 feet. We were interested in looking at the area where Craig was found, but in the interest of full disclosure, I was pretty spooked by the conditions in the area. The rock bluffs were impossibly jagged and steep, with nasty, loose rock abounding. On the slope just to their east, a large fracture in the snow was building. It just didn't look safe. Making matters worse, the bowl was heating up significantly, adding to the rockfall and slide danger (which was nothing more than moderate, but you must understand that on this trip moderate wasn't acceptable - only safe and sound was acceptable). We made a visual inspection of the area, then continued up the route.

At approximately 10,400 feet, the weather suddenly changed masks again. Within minutes the clouds had rolled in and we were fast becoming enveloped in a sea of white. Our plan had been to climb separately from Bruce and Em on the third and final day that myself and the Jeffs would have on the mountain. The Jeffs and I planned to either go for the summit early (though we knew we'd likely be too tired since we'd gotten a late start and probably wouldn't be able to recover adequately for a necessary 1am start) or scramble up Shastina for a look down on the Whitney Glacier, which Em and Bruce planned to descend once over the col, and search.

My main and abiding concern, even though the route was fairly wide and reasonably easy to navigate, was that the Jeffs and I would have to descend the terrain alone the next day, as Bruce and Em planned to stay an extra night. If I couldn't see the route on the way up, make out distinguishing marks, rocks, ridges, etc., then I did not want to try to descend it later. In other words, I had to know what we were getting into, so I could tell how to get out safely. Again, previous occurrences weighed heavily. And the final fact was that we were there to look for John, and if we couldn't see anything but white, what was the point?