Sunday July 12th 7:41 pm PT The team woke at midnight to cloud and light snow at 11,000 ft. We got up and rallied anyway, packing and eating a hot breakfast. We set off into the murk at around 2:30 AM and snowshoed for several hours by Braille in the whiteout. Finally we got a little visibility down at 8000 ft, the base of Ski Hill. The glacier surface didn't freeze up last night and so we had some nervous moments crossing soft and saggy crevasse bridges. One of our team went neck-deep in a complicated hole just below Mt. Francis - one of the very last crevasses we had to deal with, actually. We plucked him from the ice, but not without a fair bit of grunting and cursing and straining at the ropes. Then it was a simple but strenuous uphill climb to the old site of basecamp (there is nothing there now -which is normal in late season). Quite literally, we'd just put our packs down, at around 11:40 AM, when two beautiful K2 Aviation ski otters landed and took us to Talkeetna. The afternoon was a busy one, drying and sorting everything around the K2 hangar and connecting to the world again. We'll have a victory dinner tonight at the West Rib, perhaps with a toast or two thrown in. And then we look forward to a comfortable night's sleep at the Talkeetna Motel. Tomorrow we'll leave each other and be out on our own for the first time in three weeks. Thanks very much for keeping track of our climb. Until Next Time, RMI Guide Dave Hahn

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