Day 6/Jun 9: Carry to 12,800 ft

Today's activities are a little different. They may have rested yesterday but until today they had never backtracked. You can think of it as the start of the real climbing. The first four days were spent hauling the sleds up the valley over a mostly low angle glacier. Then they rested a day before ferrying a half load up to 12,800 ft where they dug a 3 ft deep pit to cache the supplies.

Digging a meter down into the hard packed snow isn't easy and in this case is probably excessive but it is a Park Service requirement on Denali. Shallow caches are in danger of being uncovered by the sun and pillaged by birds. The plan was to return the following day with the rest of their supplies, pick up the cache (or part of it) and carry on to a higher camp. The purpose is two-fold. First they are only moving half the weight that distance and second there is a significant acclimatization benefit to "climbing high, sleeping low". And they probably hate to leave the nice little snow house they built.