It is all about the weather. We arrived at Silver City, about two hours from Whitehorse, and began the long wait for the weather to turn suitable for flying. Some people have to wait for an hour, we, on the other hand, waited for 10 days.
The flight in is about 160km from Silver City on the edge of Kluane National Park to the Quintina Sella Glacier. The base camp for the King Trench route is at approximately 2800m.
While we were waiting to fly in other climbers were waiting to fly out. Donjek Upton our pilot, who was taking over responsibilities for the venerable Andy Williams, received daily weather up-dates from a team waiting to fly out from the base of the East Ridge.
The team had called in with a satellite phone to let Donjek know that the winds had dropped enough for Donjek to fly in to retrieve them. Unfortunately, the team's weather report was somewhat optimistic. As Donjek came in to land on the glacier the winds were so strong that they caught the tiny 3-seater Helio Courier and tipped it on such an angle that the wing actually dipped far enough to make contact with the snow. At that point Donjek aborted the landing attempt and flew back to Silver City.
After ten long days of waiting our moment had come. The amazing thing about the time we spent waiting was the positive attitudes of every one of our team members. The determination of our team had been tested even before we got on the mountain. There were five of us all together. Mike and Lucille from Edmonton, AB, Thomas from Germany, living in Florida, Rich from Pemberton, BC and myself Martin Fichtl.
Rich, who was our lead guide, has spent so much time in the Saint Elias range it seemed he was as comfortable here as if he was wandering around his own back yard. Without a doubt, it was Rich's skill and experience that allowed us to continue when other teams turned back.
Lucille, Mike and Thomas found that they all had a common passion: jumping off high mountains. They were all para-glider pilots.
Mike had a long time dream of climbing Mount Logan which he had almost put to rest until Lucille, who, on a recent successful climb of Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, were she discovered the joys of suffering at altitude, tempted Mike with a trip to Mount Logan.
Thomas was just beginning a year long adventure to climb the highest peak in every country as he cycled from Alaska to Patagonia to raise money for Doctors with out borders (Please check out Thomas' blog at: http://tlausser.com/blog/).
Myself, I am usually going down the mountain on skis but due to a series of fortunate events found myself on the ski-tour of a lifetime. I spend my winters working for Canada West Mountain School as an avalanche instructor and ski-touring guide. When the need for an assistant guide for the Logan expedition arose I jumped at the opportunity.
