Lane Christenson and Dalton Borton of the U.S. have called off their attempt to climb Alaska’s Mt. McKinley in winter just two days after being dropped on the ice.
The pair set off from the base of Heartbreak Hill up the Kahiltna Glacier yesterday, fighting high winds, their team told the Alpymon blog. At the end of the day, they dug a snow cave to shelter from the wind.
At around 4 pm, the wind rose suddenly to nearly 145kph, with a temperature of -16ºC. The forecast confirmed that conditions would remain bad for several days, so the pair decided to abort the expedition.
A bush plane dropped the climbers on the shadowed Kahiltna Glacier on Wednesday. Photo: Talkeetna Air
They have called for a pickup, but the air taxi service needs to wait for better conditions for a safe flight. Meanwhile, Christenson and Borton have pitched their tent and sheltered it from the high winds with a wall of snow and are now in waiting mode.
