June 20-23 - Today we cached stuff on 16 Ridge (at 16,000 feet). I got a bad stomach ache as we went, which was annoying. Then we got to the fixed lines which I thought were easier than the normal hills. They took a while, but the fixed lines were fun. We continued along the ridge until the cache point. We got stuck coming down for a little while as other groups were moving up. We finally got back to camp after 8 hours of work. I was really exhausted because I hadn’t had anything to eat with my stomach, but I ate dinner. My hip had been hurting really bad for a few days and we figured out it was because there was a big plastic thing connected to my pocket! My leg is also cut up because my boot has been rubbing against it. June 21 was a rest day and I slept for 12 hours. I had biscuits and gravy for breakfast and did sno-ga with a bunch of people. I was getting a little nervous because some weather may be coming in. June 22 we moved to 17 Camp (at 17,000 feet). It was a really hard day with a lot of weight. We had to cross a crevasse to get to the fixed lines, which was hard with my heavy pack. The ridge was pretty sketchy and there was an accident on it - one of the guides from another group fell and injured himself. They evacuated him down to 14 Camp. After 7 hours of climbing, we made it to 17 Camp, set up camp, and relaxed. We had a conversation with the guides about our summit schedule. I am a little nervous and I have a slight headache, but I am mostly just tired. We woke up the next day to good weather, and so took a rest day as we had hoped and will attempt the summit tomorrow. We relaxed and played some card games. I made a bunch of friendship bracelets and then we had dinner and watched all of the “good luck” videos our family and friends had sent to us to save for this night. My favorite piece of advice was thinking about how “I could quit, but I won’t”. I am nervous of course, but confident - I really think I can do it.
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