Sibley Family and Friends Mount Ararat Expedition Dispatch

August 6, 2013 – The Entire Team is Acclimatizing Well and Enjoying Mt. Ararat

It’s now 5:30 in the afternoon on Mt. Ararat. We are getting ready to settle down for our second night at Camp I here at 12,200 feet. We’ve had two very successful first days on the mountain. Today we didn’t leave very early because we didn’t really have that far to go. Today was mostly about stretching our legs and getting ourselves prepared to move up to High Camp tomorrow.

The sun comes really early to this camp so a bunch of us were out kind of wondering around by 6 and the sun was already up. We had breakfast at 8 and by 9:30 we were climbing towards High Camp, but we did not go all the way.

There is horse traffic taking equipment up and down for other groups on the trail to High Camp and there are a number of other climbers on that route as well. So after we visited our regular spot at “Coca Cola” Camp we decided that those who wanted to save their knees would descend and the rest of us climbed to 12,900 feet to a beautiful view point. Then we all came back down and had a relaxing afternoon here at Camp I.

Acclimatization is important and the elevation you sleep at is the real key, our second night here is going to help us as we move higher tomorrow and prepare for the summit. We are doing oxygen saturation readings of each member of the team and this team is remarkably well acclimatized. Everybody has oxygen saturations in the high 80 and low 90 percent range, which is perfect!

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