First thing on the ice, we needed to build a safe camp.  This involved about two and a half hours of sawing snow  blocks to build walls to protect our tents and cooking are.  Hot and demanding work at altitude. We got the tents up, but our work was not done.  Base  camp was built, but next we would need to carry a load up to Camp one.  This was particularly urgent since we had  lost two days due to bad weather...	No rest for us!  After building our base camp, we charted  our route up to camp one.   Dave went first, probing for  crevasses and marking our safe path with bamboo poles  with bright tape (wands).  Dave had a superb instinct for  avoiding crevasses-- on this very crevassed mountain we  crossed only two or three, each less than a foot wide.  You  can see an ice fall behind us.  This day we we carried a load  of food and fuel up to around 12,200 feet and cached it.  The following day we carried a second load and moved the camp up.  The first day was my hardest-- rapid change  in altitude and alot of work, plus it was too sunny!  Back down to base camp for a Cajun shrimp and rice  dinner, then twelve hours sleep in our -20 degree bags.
We had great views right away.  Here we are about  1000 feet above our base camp.  You can see wands and  our footprints.  We are perhaps the only people for thirty miles in any direction.	Here we are at Camp One, elevation 12,200.   When  we  went into shade temperatures dropped to minus ten,  maybe even minus twenty.  Shadows came to camp around  7pm and dusk lasted the next four or five hours.  Our route  downhill is seen bering left and up with several wands.  Also visible is the faint line of our camp boundary.  Peaks across the valley are around 13,000 feet high.
Camp One at around 12,200 feet elevation.  We had to  dig more here as the slopes were steeper.  Kitchen is in between the tents.  False summit of Mount Bona behind us.  Got one very sunny day here where temperature reached 90 degrees inside the tent.  (Outside was still pretty cold)  Handy decorator idea-- Tibetan Pray Flags  brighten up any camp.  Thanks to Matt for that,  after last year's soggy Tibetan trip.	We continued moving loads of equipment higher,  climbing in two good weather days from Camp 1  (12,200 ft) to Camp 2 (13,800 ft).  We were getting well adjusted to the altitude and the weather was sunny  and clear.  As we got higher we could see more and more of the superb views we had hoped for including  Mt Logan (19,550 feet) second highest peak in North America, Mt. Saint Elias (18008 feet) fourth  highest and Mt. Foraker (17400 feet) the sixth highest!

 

High camp, elevation 13,800 feet.  Only hours after  building camp 2, the weather turned sour.  Winds rose,  the temperature dropped and it started snowing.  For  the next 36 hours this was pretty much my view.  Our snow walls, strong tents, minus twenty degree bags and lots of hot drinks kept us comfortable.  It stayed very bright and I kept hoping for a break in the storm and a dash to the summit, but it was not to be... The real crisis came when despite oxygen deprivation  I finally finished the 550 page Doctor Faustus by Mann.  And my only other book was at at camp one, oh horrors!

After a twenty four hour blow the sun came out  shining brightly on our tents.  I had visions of starting for the summit at four pm (which was theoretically  possible since it never got dark!).  When I got outside and saw this cloud structure over the summit I knew it was not to be.  These lens shaped, "lenticular" clouds form when wind speeds are over 100 m.p.h.  I asked Dave and he agreed,"No go".  What's more, he said that the storm wasn't over.  He was right.

The second morning of the storm,  our time had run out to attempt the summit.  We packed up in the blowing snow, assembling packs and drag bags and  roped up.  Dave said we were safe to descend as long as we could see from one wand to the next.  He was a pretty amazing route finder  and we were very glad that he had  marked the route so well with wands.

Portrait during storm, I look like I am wearing everything I own, but I am still carrying the down parka.

Marginal weather in the morning, with blowing snow  and a cross wind of about 20 mph.  At 8 am we heard  our plane flying over.  Dave got on our line of sight radio.  Pilot asked if we want out today.  He thought we were coming out the next day!  He told us to get ready.  We packed up and waited.  It was the coldest two hours of the trip in the lee of the snow walls.  Dave explained all the the shelters he could build with  a shovel and nylon bag...

The last picture. At 10 am our pilot landed using our lined up partly  frozen bodies to guide him on in.  We ran to turn the  plane down-glacier and then to load it.  A spectacular flight out, followed by a sauna, a good meal, another flight, a drive and another good meal.   During our flight off Bona we flew by many shear faces like the  one in this picture.  At the bottom of one, we saw two tiny figures.  They were two world class mountaineers,  one of them being Carlos Buhler, who has climbed a route up Mount Everest that has never been repeated.  We ended up having lunch with them later. They had  tried a shear rock face coated with many  feet of ice and frosting at the same time we were on Mount Bona.  They  were turned back by continuos avalanches-- said it was like vertical surfing.  We felt a little better about not summiting