It is today or never, the weather is nice when Kai wakes up, then turns to snow, then good again with some blue sky at times, then not good again. We pack our bags for a summit attempt anyway. 1 sleeping bag for the team, 1 sleeping pad, emergency kit, heavy expedition mittens, all our water each, some snacks, down pants, all our warm layers (primaloft, mid-weight down jackets) gore-tex pro shell jackets, windproof balaclava. And with all this our packs feel as light as ever, we basically never carry this little up the mountain as are always ferrying stuff up. We only partly believe in it, but we go for it anyway. Kai is a bit stressed, it is 915am and he rushes us to get going when we agreed to leave at 930am. He is on his toes: ’guys, if we are going to go its now!’ We feel the tension. I guess he is the only one of the 3 of us to know the immensity of the climb remaining to reach the summit and get back within a reasonable time that guarantees our safety. The cold is intense today, our feet get cold immediately.

Packs on, ice-axe in hand, crampons on and we are off for the summit push. We walk in the snowstorm headed for the first section called the Autobahn that will bring us to Denali Pass. It is minimum a 12 hours day. After 1 hour of climbing, we reach the bottom of the Autobahn section. We are wearing our heavy down parkas and still we can feel the cold. All 3 of us have very cold feet by now. There is a quick discussion on ‘what do we do’. We can push up Denali pass which is going to be a 2-3 hour climb with low visibility, extreme cold, for what? to turn around later as the weather gets worse? or we can simply turn around now, regroup and look at the options. My heart tells me to stay, push, endure the cold, climb higher, we trained for this! but reason tells me to turn around, protect my feet, keep my energy for what is to come. Its a quick vote, as the snow falls harder by now. We all agree to turn around and head back to camp. I was last on the rope so now I am leading the way back to camp. I cannot even find the path we took an hour ago, so I go by feel until I can see our red Hilleberg tent far away.

After regrouping in the tent and going over the main options: option 1 – staying put the next 2 days and waiting for the storm to pass, but risking to miss our exit from the mountain; option 2 – moving down today back to camp 3. Xav and I go back and forth. I am 50/50, Xav is on favour of going down. We have been on the mountain for 15 days already and have at least another 2 days before flying out. Kai tries to come up with other options to make another summit push but dates seem not to work and our motivation after 17 days of cold, bad weather, fatigue has dwindled.

Decision taken, we are headed down, most probably back to camp 3 today, then all the way to base camp tomorrow.