Matt Keller and Mike Meekins flew us in to the Knik Glacier on May 1 and we began our ascent with the hopes of summiting Mt. Marcus-Baker. We had some good weather as we traveled up the glacier. Then a small storm came in that stopped us for a day and a half and we realized we wouldn’t have time to climb Mt. Marcus-Baker, so we attempted a couple smaller peaks around the upper portion of the Knik glacier. Then the night before we planned to begin our decent (May 9th), the wind picked up and snow began to fall. We had some wind walls built of snow, but as the night progressed the wind continued to build and eat away at our wind walls.
About 11 pm the tent with Jamie, Margo and Jesse in it had some tent poles break, so they shouted to us that they were going to take it down and come hunker with us in our 3-person tent (the wind walls were still providing some protection to our tent). We took turns through the night sitting up and bracing the wall of the tent while the other three tried to sleep. By 6 am, Jamie had decided our best option was to begin digging a snow cave and take shelter there because this tent wouldn’t last much longer. So two of us exited the tent and began digging nearby in whiteout conditions with 60-70 mile per hour winds and gusts even higher. By noon we had the snow cave constructed and we began transferring things from the tent to the cave… and we took down the tent (by now also with broken poles).
Then for the next 4 days we lived in this snow cave. One challenge was getting enough ventilation, because the door was getting covered with drifting and falling snow… so we spent a good part of our second day in the cave building snow chimneys… to allow ventilation but deflect drifting snow. Down in the cave it was eerily calm, but outside the wind and driving snow was amazingly fierce. Spending 30 minutes out there felt like forever.
In the end the storm lasted two days beyond what we had planned to spend in the mountains, so we had to ration our food to make it last. And finally on the 14th of May, the wind calmed, the skies cleared and Mike Meekins was able to fly in to our camp at 8000 feet and pick us up in his Super Cub one at a time… What a glorious feeling to see him land!!