May 27, 2023 10:29PM PT

Today we woke up to brutal cold, and clear skies. We blasted the stoves and rolled into a late morning of granola.

After watching Mike and Pete's teams roll out of camp, we followed suite and began our way up the steep corridor to the base of the fixed lines. We shortened up the rope internals, set up our ascenders, and made our way up the final 700' vertical feet of blue ice to the saddle on the west buttress. Right around 16,100, we crested the buttress and made our way up to our cache site near 16,300'.

After digging a cache hole in the world’s firmest snow, we turned around and made our way back to 14 camp for a late dinner of ramen.

Everyone worked hard and is looking forward to a well-deserved rest day tomorrow.

Nikki, Leif, Lauren and Team